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THOMAS CARLYLE. 



^mt\}'& lEnglisf) Classics 

1^1 

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND 
THE HEROIC IN HISTORY 



BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 



EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, 
AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BY 

HERBERT S. MURCH, Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 






COPYRIGHT, 1913, 
BY D. C. HEATH & CO. 

1L2 



PINKHAM PRESS 
BOSTON, MASS. 

€CU3321V5 



EDITOR'S PREFATORY NOTE 

This edition of Heroes and Hero-Worship has been pre- 
pared for the use of beginners in the study of Carlyle. With 
a view to their needs, I have intended that the Introduction 
should contain as much of a discussion of the author and of 
the significance of Heroes as may serve to clear the ap- 
proaches to a difficult book, and that the Notes should sup- 
ply all necessary information regarding obscure details in the 
text. My undertaking has of course involved a general 
obligation to the several editors of Heroes whose work has 
preceded mine. 



H. S. M. 



Princeton University, 
November i8, 19 12. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION • . . ix 

I. Thomas Carlyle ix 

II. The Style, Plan, and Teachings of Heroes and 

Hero-worship . . . . - , . . xxx 

A. Style xxxi 

B. Plan xxxvi 

C. Teachings xxxix 

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN 

HISTORY : 

Lecture I. The Hero as Divinity i 

Lecture 11. The Hero as Prophet 45 

Lecture III. The Hero as Poet 84 

Lecture IV. The Hero as Priest . . . . . . 1 24 

Lecture V. The Hero as Man of Letters . . . .166 

Lecture VI. The Hero as King 211 

Carlyle's Summary 263 

NOTES . . . .273 

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING . 308 
CARLYLE'S INDEX 311 



Vll 



INTRODUCTION 

I. Thomas Carlyle 

Carlyle once left in his journal a defiant injunction against 
any person who might presume to write his life: 'I would 
say to my biographer, if any fool undertook such a task, 
^ forbear, poor fool ! Let no life of me be written; let me 
and my bewildered wrestlings lie there and be forgotten 
swiftly of all the world. If thou write, it will be mere delu- 
sion and hallucination. The confused world never under- 
stood or will understand me and my poor affairs. " ' When 
he wrote this mandate, he perhaps little suspected how often 
it would be broken ; but he himself offended chiefly, for he 
was his own most faithful biographer. The world has been 
sufficiently confused, indeed, by some of Carlyle's eccentrici- 
ties ; but in his journal, his letters, and his books themselves, 
he has nevertheless disclosed his essential nature more fully 
than almost any other modern author. Though dealing 
much with the remote abstractions of thought, his mind was 
fundamentally subjective, and his writings sprang largely 
from an intense realization of his personal life. From them, 
as well as from many external sources, it becomes possible 
here to sketch his masterful personality and the leading 
influences which shaped it. 

Thomas Carlyle was born in the village of Ecclefechan, 
Scotland, on December 4, 1795. His genius was underived, 
but his character showed the usual stamp of race. His 
ancestors were Scotch peasants, hardy farmers and mechanics 
who had lived along the southern border of their country for 
generations before his birth. James Carlyle, the author's 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

father, was a stone mason, one of several brothers who were 
known as Hhe five fighting masons,' — 'a curious sample of 
folks, pithy, bitter speaking bodies, and awfu' fighters.' 
He was a man of native superiority and worth, — 'of per- 
haps the very largest natural endowment it has been my lot 
to converse with,' wrote his famous son. 'None of you will 
ever forget that bold glowing style of his, flowing free from 
his untutored soul, full of metaphors (though he knew not 
what a metaphor was), with all manner of potent words. 
. . . His words were like sharp arrows that smote into the 
very heart. ... He was a man of rigid, even scrupulous 
veracity. He was irascible, choleric, and we all dreaded his 
wrath, but passion never mastered him. . . . Man's face 
he did not fear: God he always feared. . . . Let me learn 
of him. Let me write my books as he built his houses, and 
walk as blamelessly through this shadow world.' 

In spite of their marked resemblances, Carlyle complained 
that, as a boy, he was 'ever more or less awed and chilled' 
by his father. His powers unfolded, however, under the 
wise affections of his mother, who, though wholly without 
formal culture, was a woman of strong mind and ready 
sympathy. She saw her son's abilities and encouraged his 
ambitions. When he was a child, she taught him, out of 
her own meagre knowledge, to read, and when, as a man, 
he was separated from her, she learned to write in order to 
answer his letters. She studied his books as best she could, 
and watched with a tender pride his rise from obscurity to 
the splendid fame which he at length achieved. There was 
a fine simplicity in the great author's reverence for the un- 
lettered mother. When he had become the courted leader 
of a brilliant intellectual circle in London, he was continually 
withdrawing to the humble associations of his youth, still 
to find there an unspoiled profit in the homely counsel of 
her 'with whom alone my heart played freely;' and from 



INTRODUCTION xi 

first to last her devotion was a bright, sustaining influence 
in a Hfe which was pervasively sad. 

Thomas was the eldest of a large and poverty-laden family, 
and his childhood did not differ outwardly from that of other 
peasant boys in his neighborhood. The father earned only 
one hundred pounds at his trade in his best year, yet managed 
to educate the most promising of his sons. The lad had 
learned to read before he was five, when his father taught 
him arithmetic and sent him to the village school.* At seven 
he was reported ^complete in English.' At ten he was 
taken to the Grammar School at Annan, where Hhe young 
heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' ^ 
He was a nervous, oversensitive child, much tormented by 
his schoolfellows, who called him ^^Tom the Tearful.'' He 
freed himself from persecution at length by furiously drubbing 
the biggest of the bullies ; but he remained unhappy, for he 
found no congenial comrades, and his active mind rebelled 
against the narrow methods of his old-fashioned school. 
*My Teachers,' says Teufelsdrockh (really Carlyle himself) 
in Sartor Resartus, ^were hide-bound Pedants, without 
knowledge of man's nature or of boy's; or of aught save 
their lexicons and quarterly account-books. . . . The Hin- 
terschlag Professors knew syntax enough ; and of the human 
soul thus much : that it had a faculty called Memory, and 
could be acted on through the muscular integument by 
appliance of birch-rods.' 

At fourteen Carlyle entered Edinburgh University, having 
walked the eighty miles from Ecclefechan to save coach-hire. 
In Edinburgh he was surrounded by hund*reds of youths as 
poor as himself, who were, in many cases, the brightest 
members of peasant families, sent to the University under 
the heavy sacrifices of their parents. He, like the other 

^ Sartor Resartus^ II, iii. 



Xli INTRODUCTION 

students, spent seven months of each year in teaching or 
working on the farm at home to pay his way; the rest of 
the time was given over to incessant, crowded study in the 
college. The discipline in hardship and self-dependence was 
bracing to character; but Carlyle owed a relatively small 
share of his mental progress to his college training. Like 
other youths of genius, he chafed under the limits and re- 
quirements of educational systems which have been con- 
structed to meet the needs of average minds. His main 
stimulus came from his independent thought and study, and 
from the companionship of his chosen friends, all of whom 
predicted for him some sort of future greatness. 'Among 
eleven hundred Christian youths,' says Teufelsdrockh, 
Hhere will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By 
collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was 
communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I took 
less to rioting than to thinking and reading, which latter 
also I was free to do. Nay from' the chaos of that Library, 
I succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been 
known to the very keeper thereof. The foundation of a 
Literary Life was hereby laid.' 

At nineteen Carlyle left Edinburgh without a degree. 
Then, notwithstanding his temperamental dislike for pre- 
scribed duties, he taught mathematics in schools at Annan 
and Kirkcaldy for four years, at the end of which he 'kicked 
the schoolmaster functions over ' and returned to Edinburgh. 
His parents hoped that he would enter the ministry, but 
growing disbehef in the doctrines of the Scottish Kirk with- 
held him. He tried to study law, but his lecturers soon 
appeared to him ' mere denizens of the kingdom of dulness, 
pointing towards nothing but money as wages for all that 
bogpool of disgust,'^ and he 'flung the thing away forever.' 

1 From Carlyle's letters. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

Sleeplessness and dyspepsia, two lifelong foes, attacked him, 
the latter ^gnawing like a rat at the pit of my stomach.' 
Unwell, lonely, adrift without prospects or plans, Carlyle 
entered what he called Hhe three most miserable years of 
my life,' harried by ^eatings of the heart — above all, 
wanderings through mazes of doubt, perpetual questionings 
unanswered,' etc., etc. These dismal moods were a forma- 
tive element of the utmost value, for they were really the 
struggles of his immature genius to find its way. Their 
source was the spiritual agony which accompanied his first 
real contact with the great perplexities of life, — its mean- 
ing and end, its apparent injustice, inequalities and defeat. 
'Is there no God then?' he cried, 'but at best an absentee 
God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside, 
of his Universe, and seeing it go ? ' ^ For months Carlyle 
scanned the world-old problems, 'shouting question after 
question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny,' only to receive 
'no Answer but an Echo.'^ He could not, like shallower 
natures, forget his doubts in practical activities. He re- 
garded their conquest as the first of all necessities. At length, 
after three weeks of almost total sleeplessness, there came 
to him, while one day passing through Leith Walk, the sudden 
deliverance which he describes in a famous chapter of Sartor 
Resartus entitled "The Everlasting No." Unmeaning to 
conventional minds, this revelation became the essence of 
Carlyle's personal faith. It persuaded him that the material 
world with its evils is scarcely more than an illusion. Like 
other prophets, he felt for himself, not at second hand, that 
the only deep and lasting reality is spirit, and that mind and 
will are supreme forever over fate. 'And as I so thought, 
there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and 
I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of 

^ Sartor Resartus , II, vii. 2 /^^^, 



Xiv INTRODUCTION 

unknown strength ; a spirit, almost a god. . . . The Ever- 
lasting No had said: ^^ Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, 
and the Universe is mine (the DeviFs) ;" to which my whole 
Me now made answer : ^^ I am not thine, but Free, and for- 
ever hate thee !" It is from this hour that I incline to date 
my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; per- 
haps I directly thereupon began to be a Man/ 

The crisis turned partly upon Carlyle^s reading of the 
German philosophers and poets, especially Goethe, who 
taught him, he wrote, Hhat Reverence is still possible: 
that instead of conjecturing and denying, I can again believe 
and know.' Under the inspiration of his German studies, 
he wrote his Life of Schiller in 1823, and, in 1824, his trans- 
lation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, These were his first 
books. They brought him some revenue, though his steady 
••■support, for a number of years, came from private tutoring 
and the writing of hack articles for the Edinburgh Encyclo- 
pcedia. 

After the experience in Leith Walk, the next memorable 
event in Carlyle's life was his marriage to Miss Jane Baillie 
Welsh, the brilliant daughter of a well-to-do surgeon in 
Haddington. Many are the stories of Jane Welsh's preco- 
cious girlhood. At a very tender age she persuaded her 
father to let her 4earn Latin like a boy.' At nine she read 
Virgil, an achievement under which she was so abashed by 
a lingering love for her doll that she burnt the poor victim on 
a funeral pyre of pencils and cinnamon sticks to a tearful 
rehearsal of Queen Dido's death speech. She became fond 
of Euclid and logic, and, before she was fourteen, had written 
a tragedy in five acts. As she grew older, her sparkling 
social talents and ^ electric intellect' (Carlyle's phrase) made 
her the belle of her country town. She was a wit, with a 
knack for light raillery, which too often turned to merciless 
sarcasm ; but she was strikingly beautiful, and adored by no 



^ INTRODUCTION XV 

end of luckless suitors. Carlyle first met her in his Kirk- 
caldy days. She was disposed to laugh at the Annandale 
peasant's rude exterior: ^Only his tongue should be left 
at liberty, his other members are most fantastically awk- 
ward;' but the elegant ^mocking-bird' was soon a captive 
to that tongue's resistless magic. She saw her new lover's 
immense superiority over all the rest, and the glowing promise 
of his future. The long courtship was Platonic enough at 
first, devoted to bookish matters chiefly, but it gradually 
drifted into sentiment, with rugged insistence on the wooer's 
part, receding hesitancies and final capitulation on the 
lady's. After five years of acquaintance, they were married 
in October, 1826. 

The chronological narrative must here be suspended for 
a time in order that we may glance at the circumstances of 
a domestic history which, if they have occasioned much idl^« 
comment, nevertheless must fill a large space in any account 
of Carlyle's character. He was wholly unfitted for ordinary 
family life. He had surrendered himself, heart and soul, 
to the delivery of certain great truths through the medium 
of his books. He was selfish, some one has shrewdly said, 
if it were selfish to sacrifice others to his high purpose as 
completely as he was sacrificed. He worked with such ab- 
sorbed and gigantic energy that he often seemed to forget 
the comforts, even the presence, of those about him. When 
he was in the throes of composition, any household trial was 
likely to call down violent gusts of anger which made Mrs. 
Carlyle declare that living beside him was the life of a weather- 
cock in a high wind. He was a querulous, techy, very thin- 
skinned member of Hhe irritable race of writers.' His 
acute nerves were defenseless against all noise, he was contin- 
ually fretted by dyspepsia, and hounded, for many years, 
by poverty. With great practical cleverness, Mrs. Carlyle 
strove to hedge her ^Babe of Genius,' as she called him, 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

from annoyance. She waged inglorious but triumphant war 
on successive parrots, cats, cocks (Hhe demon fowls') and 
street organs. In their early years she learned to cook, 
mend, scour and scrub, in order to splice out their slender 
purse. She freed her husband's mind for his literary labor 
by slaving in a hundred ways which the abstracted author 
rarely noticed. She was as sensitive, as ambitious, almost 
as highly gifted as he ; and her proud spirits were ruffled by 
the unrequited drudgeries of her lot. She complained that 
she was extremely neglected for the sake of unborn genera- 
tions. After thirty years of wedded life, she wrote: 'I 
married for ambition, Carlyle has exceeded all that my 
wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am miserable;' 
— and to a young friend: 'My dear, whatever you do, 
never marry a man of genius.' 

The outcries against Carlyle which followed his wife's 
death and the publication of her unhappy letters have given 
way to a charitable view of his domestic behavior. Mrs. 
Carlyle was often in ill health. Under her nervous suffer- 
ings, she magnified trifles as much as her husband. She was as 
incapable of enduring the petty vexations of the day as he, 
and even less able to remain silent under them. Her ' quick 
temper found vent in sarcasms that blistered and words 
like swords.'^ The irritability of both, however, was super- 
ficial. At bottom there was a mutual devotion, real and 
constant. They enjoyed a rare intellectual companionship, 
and each was immensely proud of the other's abilities and 
force of character. We may wish that Carlyle had oftener 
expressed affection and acknowledged the self-abnegations 
of his wife ; but there were depths of tenderness in his rugged 
nature which would have been unsealed by a gentler tact 
than hers. When death removed her from him, the hidden 

^ Nichol, Thomas Carlyle, chap. iii. 



INTRODUCTION xvil 

love at length flowed freely, sad with pity and regret. 'I 
doubt/ wrote the desolate old man, 'if I ever saw a nobler 
human soul than this which (alas, alas, never rightly valued 
till now !) accompanied all my steps for forty years. Blind 
and deaf that we are: oh think, if thou yet love anybody 
living, wait not till Death sweep down the paltry little dust-, 
clouds and idle dissonances of the moment; and all be at 
last so mournfully clear and beautiful, when it is too late.' 
For eighteen months after their marriage, the Carlyles 
lived in Edinburgh, where the young author earned a meagre 
livelihood by writing for the Reviews. The pecuniary strain 
growing unbearable, they retreated in 1828 to Craigenputtock 
(''Hill of the Hawks")) a bleak farm in the moorlands of 
Dumfriesshire which Mrs. Carlyle had inherited. Here, 
sixteen miles from the nearest town and far removed from all 
their friends, they lived for six monotonous years. The 
society-loving wife found a compensation for her loneliness 
in the steady development of her husband's powers amid 
surroundings which were favorable to undisturbed medi- 
tation and work. Their solitude was broken by occasional 
visitors. Once there came 'a certain sky-messenger' from 
America, named Ralph Waldo Emerson, then unknown to 
fame, and 'a quiet night of clear fine talk ' ^ was the beginning 
of one of the most memorable of literary friendships. ' I 
found the house amid desolate heathery hills,' writes Emer- 
son,2 'where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. 
... He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff -like brow, and hold- 
ing his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy com- 
mand; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; 
full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which 
floated everything he looked upon.' At Craigenputtock 
Carlyle penned some of his best essays. Here he wrote 

* Reminiscences, p. 391. ^ English Traits y vol. ii. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

Sartor Resartus, perhaps his most representative book; 
it contains the essence of almost all the doctrines which he 
later elaborated. The startling originality of its style be- 
wildered and repelled the conventional English reader. All 
the publishers rejected the manuscript, its author carrying 
it about, as he put it, ^for some two years from one terrified 
owl to another,' and finally printing it serially in Fraser^s 
Magazine, 1833-4, against the protest of the subscribers. 
Apparently its imique merit was recognized at first by only 
three persons in the world, — Emerson in Concord, an obscure 
Irish priest in Cork, and Mrs. Carlyle, the last of whom pro- 
nounced it ^a work of genius, dear.' Long after it was 
written, not many years before Carlyle's death, twenty 
thousand copies of a cheap edition were sold instantly on 
pubUcation. 

'Man,' said old James Carlyle, chiding his son for his 
inland seclusion, 'it's surely a pity that thou shouldst sit 
yonder with nothing but the eye of Omniscience to see thee, 
and thou with such a gift to speak.' Some notion of the 
same sort, perhaps, together with the desirability of being 
in the reach of libraries, impelled the Carlyles to move to 
London in 1834. They took up their permanent abode at 
No. 5 (now No. 24) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a plain house, 
then unnoticed, but now yearly visited by thousands in 
honor to the celebrated man who once lived and wrote there. 
The audacious couple faced the great city on a reserve of only 
two hundred pounds, and the first years were dreadfully 
hard. Carlyle ' toiled terribly ' for many months over the 
first volume of his History of the French Revolution, Then, 
according to the familiar story, the manuscript was lent to 
his friend, John Stuart Mill, and destroyed by a careless 
servant. As soon as Mill had related the accident and left 
the house, Carlyle turned to his wife with the words : 'Well, 
Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up ; we must endeavor to 



INTRODUCTION xix 

hide from him how very serious this business is to us.' The 
man who always flew into a passion over a screaming parrot 
or an unseasoned dinner was able to meet the real misfor- 
tunes of life with a calm and generous courage. He bent 
with new zeal to the task of re-writing, and in the spring of 
1837 the entire work was given to the world, which, as he 
justly declared, had not for a hundred years had any book 
that came ^more direct and flamingly from the heart of a 
living man.' The unapproached dramatic animation of the 
narrative, its rapid movement and succession of brilliant 
historic pictures, gained instant and enthusiastic praise from 
the author's intellectual peers. Emerson wrote to him from 
America: ^The book has the best success with the best. 
Young men say it is the only history they have ever read.' 
Froude records that Dickens carried a copy of it wherever 
he went, and that Southey read it six times over. Hunt, 
Thackeray, Macaulay, Hallam, — these men recognized that 
a new star had arisen in the literature of the century, perhaps 
of greater magnitude than any of its rivals. 

Literary London began to flock about the eccentric Scotch- 
man in Cheyne Row, attracted by his amazing powers. 
Carlyle had won the approval of the cultured, but the un- 
thinking mass of readers still held aloof, though in America 
Hhe surprising Yankees' bought his books. He would not 
lower the severe moral tone of his teachings, or modify his 
difficult style, to catch the plaudits of the crowd. 'The 
poor people seem to think a style can be put off or put on, 
not like a skin but like a coat,' said he. 'Is not a skin 
verity a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it, 
exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off 
without flaying and death? The Public is an old woman. 
Let her maunder and mumble.' 

This indifference to public endorsement told inevitably 
against Carlyle's material welfare. Some influential friends, 



XX INTRODUCTION 

therefore, arranged for a series of lectures to be delivered by 
him before an audience of wealthy and aristocratic subscribers. 
The first course, on German Literature, was given in 1837. 
It was followed by courses on The History oj Literature, 
and The Revolutions of Modern Europe. The series was 
concluded with the lectures entitled On Heroes and Hero- 
Worship, which were dehvered in May, 1840. The venture 
was eminently successful, each consecutive course drawing 
larger and more distinguished audiences than the one pre- 
ceding. 'The superfine people'^ were not a little aston- 
ished by this inspired peasant from the north, who spoke 
with such rude, sharp earnestness, 'the wild Annandale 
voice goUying at them,' ^ and who could make them alternately 
laugh before his volleys of grotesque humor, weep over some 
period of tremulous pathos, break into ' universal decisive ap- 
plause,' ^ under the spell of his strange eloquence, their studied 
dignity forgotten in murmurs of 'devilish fine ! ' ^ — 'He's a 
glorious fellow; I love the fellow's very faults,' ^ ^Aye, 
faith, is he ; a fine, wild, chaotic chap,' ^ and so on all over 
the room. 'In short,' wrote Mrs. Carlyle of one occasion, 
'we left the concern in a sort of whirlwind of "glory," not 
without " bread. " ' In spite of his triumphs, the lecturer 
disliked the enterprise — ' detestable mixture of prophecy 
and play-actorism' ^ — and always anticipated it in a mood 
of comic despair : 'O heaven ! I cannot "speak ; " I can only 
gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashion- 
ables, being forced to it by want of money.' His exultant 
wife, however, took a different view, writing with regard to 
the very first course: 'Nothing he has ever tried seems to 
me to have carried such conviction to the public heart that 
he is a real man of genius and worth being kept alive at a 
moderate rate.' Carlyle's platform presence when deliver- 

1 From Carlyle's letters, 2 From Mrs. Carlyle's letters. 



INTRODUCTION Xxi 

ing Heroes is well described by Caroline Fox, a young 
Quakeress who heard the last two lectures: ^The audience 
. . . was very thoughtful and earnest in appearance; it 
had come to hear the Hero portrayed in the form of the Man 
of Letters. Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt 
a well-dressed London crowd scarcely the arena for him to 
figure in as a popular lecturer. He is a tall, robust-looking 
man ; rugged simplicity and indomitable strength are in his 
face, and such a glow of genius in it — not always slumber- 
ing there, but flashing from his beautiful grey eyes, from the 
remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. 
His manner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously 
convinced of what he utters, and who had much — very much 
in him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered 
to the uninitiated ear ; and when the Englishman's sense of 
beauty or truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would 
impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that 
were not the sort of homage truth demanded. He began in a 
rather low nervous voice, with a broad Scotch accent, but it 
soon grew firm, and shrank not abashed from its great task.' 

The net earnings from the lectures were large, and in 
1842 a small fortune came to Mrs. Carlyle through the 
death of her mother. Both the maintenance and fame of 
the author were now established. Eminent men in every 
vocation sought his friendship. Even the sluggish pubHc 
became attracted to his writings. A succession of powerful 
and thought-compelling books issued from his pen. In 
1 84 1 the lectures on Heroes were published in a slightly altered 
form. Past and Present , written in 1843, was inspired by the 
miserable condition of England's unemployed poor. Its 
panacea for industrial ills is the organization of labor under 
efiicient captains, and an approximate analogy to such an 
institution appears to be found in the well-ordered monastic 
life of the mediaeval convent at St. Edmundsbury under the 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

single headship of its abbot ; but the book is really an expres- 
sion of Carlyle's political theory that the welfare of the masses 
depends upon their submission to the paternal rule of ^the best 
and bravest ' in the land (a sort of aristocracy of worth) : we 
should continually endeavor to find, and to place at the sum- 
mit of public affairs, those men who are fittest to govern. The 
next book. The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 
which appeared in 1845, marked an epoch in historical 
criticism, for it wholly reversed the judgment of two cen- 
turies upon the character of Cromwell, effectively liberating 
the great Protector from the ancient charges of hypocrisy 
and treachery, and securing his fame as one of his country's 
chief benefactors. In Latter Day Pamphlets (1850) the 
author returned to a discussion of current social issues, 
savagely attacking accepted political and economic methods 
of the day. These 'fiercest objurgations and tumults of 
wrath' were followed by a fine exhibition of Carlyle in his 
melting moods: his tender and graceful Life of Sterling 
(1851), written in memory of a deceased friend, holds a place 
among prose elegies as high as that occupied in poetry by 
Tennyson^s In Memoriam or Shelley's Adonais, Much of the 
Life, however, is devoted, not to biography, but to religious 
problems of the time ; and it contains a famous pen-picture 
of the poet Coleridge. Carlyle's final work of importance, 
and probably his masterpiece, was the History of Frederick II, 
commonly called The Great, upon which he was 'at work 
stern and grim' for thirteen laborious years. 'That night- 
mare Frederick,' he called it, 'that misery of a book.' 
'To me a desperate dead-lift pull all that time; my whole 
strength devoted to it ; alone, withdrawn from all the world.' 
It was during the ' Frederick ' period that the London noises 
caused the construction of the famous sound-proof room in 
the top-garret, where grumpy Thomas, 'whirled aloft by the 
angry elements/ as he phrased it, forged out his great his- 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

tory in quiet, while Hhe foggy Babylon tumbled along' 
in the streets below uncursed. At length, in 1865, the huge 
work appeared in eight volumes. Its accuracy in matters 
of fact, its scope and depth, its wealth of brilliant portrai- 
ture and story, at once gave it place in the highest ranges of 
historical writings. 

Soon after the completion of Frederick, Carlyle, now seventy 
years of age, was chosen to succeed Mr. Gladstone in the 
honorary office of Lord Rector of his old University in Edin- 
burgh. It was the public tribute of the Scotch people to their 
most distinguished countryman. The inaugural address, 
delivered at Edinburgh in April, 1866, marked the climax 
of his career. His wise eloquence created an extraordinary 
scene, — the audience in a delirium of applause, and the 
students all crowding and shouting about him in the streets 
when the speech was ended, many of them in tears . ' Poor 
young men,' he thought, ^so well affected to the poor old 
brother or grandfather here ; and in such a black whirlpool 
of a world here, all of us.' 

Was there in the tone of that a premonition of the tragic 
reversal which was even then impending ? In the very wake 
of his triumph came a telegram from London announcing 
that Mrs. Carlyle had suddenly died of heart failure while 
driving in Hyde Park. ^Not for above two days could I 
estimate the immeasurable depths of it, or the infinite sorrow 
which had peeled my life all bare, and in a moment shattered 
my poor world to universal ruin. They took me out next 
day to wander in the green sunny sabbath fields, and ever 
and anon there rose from my sick heart the ejaculation, ^^My 
poor little woman !" but no full gust of tears came to my relief, 
nor has yet come. Will it ever ?' ^Oh !' cried the broken and 
remorseful old man, ' if I could but see her once more, were 
it but for five minutes, to let her know that I always loved 
her through all that ! She never did know it, never ! ' 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

Carlyle did not really recover from the blow, although he 
survived his wife for fifteen years. These declining days 
were attended, however, by manifold evidences of the 
public's esteem for the great author. His books were 
generously praised by the leading Reviews; his portrait 
was painted by the foremost artists of the capital; 
he was summoned to the Deanery of Westminster for a 
meeting with the Queen ; Disraeli, as Prime Minister, urged 
him to accept a government pension and the Grand Cross 
of the Bath, an honor never before conferred except for direct 
service to the State, but these offers were decKned; in 1874 
the Prussian Ordre pour le Merite, the crowning badge of 
distinction in all Europe, was bestowed upon him. ^'The 
Sage of Chelsea" seemed at length to have come into his 
own, acclaimed and venerated by all the world. But to the 
wearied old man, in the loneliness of the Chelsea home, these 
unsought tributes appeared entirely futile and empty, and 
he even doubted the sincerity of the praise: ^Aye, they say 
I am a great man now, but not one of them believes my 
report ; not one of them will do what I have bidden them 
do.' The memory of Mrs. Carlyle's unhappy life filled 
him with morbid self-reproaches, which found expression in 
that most pathetic of books, his Reminiscences, the only 
valuable work of his decadence. He died in Chelsea on 
February 5, 1881, in his eighty-sixth year. England would 
have honored him with a burial in Westminster Abbey, but, 
in deference to his dying wishes, his remains were placed 
beside the graves of his father and mother in the old kirk- 
yard at Ecclefechan. . 

Carlyle's life is, on the whole, an inspiring one, for it is the 
spectacle of a courageous triumph over heavy odds. Born 
a peasant, reared in poverty, afflicted with grave faults of 
temperament, beset with a vexatious malady as the heritage 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

of his youthful struggles, and impeded by the public's long 
neglect of him, nevertheless he fought his way to the highest 
levels of literary influence, where he was universally hailed 
as a master in the world of thought. 

No modern literary character is more complex and para- 
doxical than Carlyle, for there was in him a strange union 
of titanic forces with some of the pettiest human frailties. 
^Of all the men I have ever known,' said his biographer 
Froude, ^ Carlyle was the least patient of the common woes 
of humanity.' 'A positive Christian in bearing others' 
pain,' said his wife, ^ he is a roaring Thor when himself 
pricked by a pin.' But if he was absurdly irritable over the 
small annoyances of life, he was loftily serene and strong 
when visited by its great calamities. Essentially he was 
the bravest and firmest of men, moulding his career by a 
steady discipline, moving victoriously through manifold 
discouragements under the guidance of a high, inflexible 
purpose. He has been described as a Puritan who had lost 
his creed, for, though in matters of faith he wandered far 
away from the narrow Calvinism of his boyhood, he was 
puritanic always in the moral elevation of his life, in 'its 
stern temperance and rigidity of noble aim.'^ 

In his attitude toward his fellow-men, Carlyle was at once 
harsh and magnanimous, appreciative and scornful. His 
view of society at large was sometimes grotesquely con- 
temptuous, as when he said that there were thirty million 
people in England, mostly fools,' or when he condemned his 
public as 'a poor gaping sea of prurient blockheadism.' 
In a diatribe of his youth he exclaims: '''How weary, flat, 
stale and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world !" 
For what are its inhabitants? Its great men and its little 
— its fat ones and its lean ? From the courtier to the clod- 

^ Nichol, Thomas Carlyle, chap, vii. 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

hopper — from the emperor to the dustman — what are 
they all ? Pitiful automatons — despicable Yahoos — yea, 
they are altogether an unsufferable thing.' We may take 
refuge from these abuses in the hope that such sardonic 
ravings against humanity in general were the mere ebulli- 
tions of black dyspeptic moments when, as he expresses it, 
'Satanas in the shape of bile was heavy upon me.' At any 
rate, he thought well enough of his fellow mortals in his 
serener moods. Individual worth readily appealed to him, 
while any concrete instance of degradation or distress was 
sure to move his lenient pity. His purse was always open to 
the outcasts of the London streets, and in the prosperity of 
his later years he was a liberal and usually anonymous giver 
to many philanthropic causes. ^His only expensive luxury 
was charity,' says Froude. Mrs. Browning once said that 
his cruel sarcasms were only ^love with the point reversed.' 
'His excess of sympathy,' wrote Harriet Martineau, 'has 
been, I believe, the master-pain of his life, . . . andthesavage- 
ness which has come to be a main characteristic ... is, 
in my opinion, a mere expression of his intolerable sympathy 
with suffering.' 'Poor, wandering, wayward man!' he 
cries in Sartor Resartus. 'Art thou not tried, and beaten 
with stripes even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the 
Royal mantle or the beggar's gaberdine, art thou not so weary, 
so heavy-laden ; and thy bed of rest is but a grave. O, my 
brother, my brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, 
and wipe away all tears from thy eyes?' Surely in an 
utterance like that there surges a fathomless affection for all 
mankind, the infinite tenderness of a great and compassionate 
soul. 

Carlyle's nature was inconsistent, and his meaning is 
often confused ; but the large results of his work stand clear. 
Perhaps he was chiefly valuable to his generation as an 
iconoclast, the fierce, destructive enemy of the worn-out 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

creeds, the hollow shams, the dull conventionalities, which 
fasten upon society and stifle its spiritual life. His tre- 
mendous gifts for denunciation and ridicule were constantly 
exercised against all manner of ^^ formulas,'' "simulacra," 
materialism and hypocrisy. He was like his own Hero- 
Priest, ^a seer, seeing through the shows of things,'^ every- 
where appealing Ho Heaven's invisible justice against 
Earth's visible force ;'^ a priest, that is, who summoned men 
from their blinding mammon-worship to a reverent explora- 
tion of Hhe divine truth of things,'^ a sober questioning 
*of their vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and their 
duty and destiny there.' ^ His mission, in short, was to 
purify and deepen the spiritual currents of his age. Sin- 
cerity, an instinctive perception of the inner truths of exist- 
ence and a devotion to their unfolding, he makes the lead- 
ing quality of all real heroes. If it be so, then Carlyle was 
among the most heroic of men. Implacable hatred of 
Falsehood in all its forms, deep uncompromising love of 
Truth, — these were the motive forces of his life. 

In defining what he means by Truth, Carlyle is not always 
plain. Upon religion, that highest of all themes, he is elo- 
quent, but he is often vague and inconclusive, for the reli- 
gious sentiment was too deep within him to attain a perfect 
utterance. No man ever had a more reverent, profounder 
sense of the sacred wonder of existence than he. On him had 
fallen 

the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 

and he found that the burden of that mystery was 
beyond the compass of his words. To him the natural 
and the supernatural were equally miraculous : the hard, 
tangible world of the senses was no more confidently to be 

^ Heroes y p. 125. 2 jj)i(i,^ p. 3. 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

explored and interpreted than the shadowy realms of the 
spirit. All life was an insoluble enigma to him, this universe 
'a living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing ; toward 
which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, 
is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship 
if not in words, then in silence.' ^ Yet he regarded the physi- 
cal universe as essentially unreal and perishable, a mere 
shadowing-forth of a Divine Presence within and beyond it 
all; it is but the "Living Garment of God." Men, too, in 
their physical forms, he thought, are but shadows, their 
bodies but the temporary wrappages and vestures of spirits 
which are immortal. ' Generation after generation takes to 
itself the Form of a Body,' and then the 'earthly Vesture 
falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished 
Shadow. . . . Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully 
across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the 
Inane. . . . But whence? — Heaven, whither? Sense 
knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through Mys- 
tery to Mystery, from God to God.'^ 

In religion, then, Carlyle was a mystic ; but on problems 
of practical morality his message is wholly intelligible and 
direct. No one has preached with more inexorable emphasis 
the stern doctrine that the performance of duty is the only 
worthy end of life. That is all : the only satisfaction pos- 
sible to man is in the realization of duty done; but not of 
duty done for the sake of reward, which were a very paltry 
aim indeed, or of happiness, which is rarely attainable in 
this world. Here is a grim rule of conduct ; but it is one to 
which Carlyle himself adhered with firm consistency. There 
is the duty of obedience, devout submission and conformity 
to all that is noble, heroic, true. Preeminent among Carlyle's 

* Heroes y p. lo. ^ Sartor Resartiis, III, viii. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

ethical teachings is his Gospel of Labor, — the duty of work. 
^The end of man/ he says, ^is an Action and not a Thought, 
though it were the noblest.' He would disregard the old 
Greek motto, ^Know thyself.' ^ Think it not thy business, 
this of knowing thyself: thou art an unknowable individual : 
know what thou canst work at ; and work at it, like a Her- 
cules!'^ '^'Laborare est orare, Work is Worship." ... O 
brother, if this is not '^ worship," then I say, the more pity for 
worship ; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under 
God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of 
toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see 
thy fellow Workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving 
there, they alone surviving : sacred Band of the Immortals, 
celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in 
the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, 
as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling, they 
alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time ! To thee Heaven, 
though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind, — as a noble 
Mother ; as that Spartan Mother, saying while she gave her 
son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it !" Thou too 
shalt return home in honour ; to thy far-distant Home, in 
honour ; doubt it not, — if in the battle thou keep thy 
shield! '2 

It would require many pages to summarize the numerous 
teachings of Carlyle. Therefore, I have selected those which 
bore most intimately upon his personal life. There is little 
in these precepts which is new beyond the novel magnificence 
or intense vitality of their expression. Indeed, Carlyle does 
not come before us as a great originative thinker, for he 
developed no new system of thought, and definitely solved 
few modern problems. Yet it is now a general verdict that 
he was the foremost British writer of his age. He owed this 

^ Past and Present ^ III, xi. * Ihid.y III, xii. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

eminence to his wide humanity; his emotional depth; his 
vitaUzing, poetic imagination ; his unequaled spiritual force ; 
his mastery of language; and the supreme originality and 
wealth of his style. He cast across his century an influence 
hardly rivaled in clearing the moral vision of men, stirring 
their moral energies, kindling their emulation of the highest 
human virtues. To-day he lives as a great literary prophet, 
with his words of fire requickening in the mind an ardent 
sense for primary ancient truths whose worth tradition and 
time-worn familiarity has dimmed; and his books will 
remain as an imperishable guide to right endeavor, intelli- 
gent purpose, and lofty thought. 



II. The Style, Plan, and Teachings of Heroes and 

Hero- Worship 

In an apologetic farewell to the audiences who had lis- 
tened to the lectures on Heroes and Hero-Worship, Carlyle 
acknowledged shortcomings in his manner of treating his 
theme. ^ It is a great subject, and a most grave and wide 
one. . . . With six months, instead of six days, we might 
have done better. I promised to break ground on it; I 
know not whether I have even managed to do that. I have 
had to tear it up in the rudest manner in order to get into 
it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt utterances 
thrown-out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been 
put to trial.' ^ The faults of method in the lectures are 
sometimes as confusing to readers of the present day 
as the lecturer supposed them to have been to his first 
hearers. ^ These abrupt utterances thrown-out isolated, 
unexplained' are likely to prove especially bewildering to 
the inexperienced Carlylean; he may find an expressive 

^ Heroes, p. 262. 



INTRODUCTION XXxi 

label for them in the phrase of an early reviewer of 
Sartor Resartus who branded that misadventurous book 
as ^a heap of clotted nonsense.' At best it is only after 
the novice has read many pages of Heroes that he is 
likely to piece together an organized conception of its 
drift. The approach to the lectures may be partly cleared, 
however, by a short exposition of their style, plan and 
teachings. 

A. Style 

In style Heroes and Hero-Worship is simpler than most of 
Carlyle's works, though it is relatively disordered and 
obscure as compared with the writings of other masters of 
prose. In a lesser degree, it is distinguished by the same 
eccentric force, the same tortuous and harsh eloquence, 
which repelled, but at length irresistibly captivated, many of 
the first readers of Sartor Resartus. One must not expect to 
find a classical finish of expression in Heroes; its peculiar 
attraction lies in a kind of blunt genuineness, or rugged 
masculinity, a style as remote from classicism as is the 4arge 
awkward gianthood,'^ which Carlyle finds so worthy of 
praise in old Norse mythology: ^Not graceful lightness, 
half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely 
truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, 
discloses itself here.' ^ There was in truth a rich measure of 
kinship between the primitive Norsemen and Thomas Carlyle. 
In him also was disclosed ^a great rude sincerity,' joined 
to a mind of tremendous power which, in its effort to voice 
itself, broke over all conventional standards of rhetoric. 
This mental impetuosity and independence explains the 
broken style which marks every page of Heroes and Hero- 
Worship, 

^ Heroes J p. 21. ^ Ibid. 



XXXii INTRODUCTION 

The earnest intensity with which the lectures were de- 
livered betrays itself through many minute irregularities of 
form in the printed book. The devices of the printer even 
suggest the original sharp emphasis with which Carlyle 
uttered his thought. Many words, and even single syllables, 
are raised above the level of the sentence by italics, as for 
example, ^a Hero, of worth immeasurable.' Common 
nouns involving an important idea are often capitalized for 
the sake of prominence, as ^That great mystery of Time, 
were there no other; ' or for the sake of heightening a concrete 
image, as 'His blood made the Sea, his flesh was the Land, 
the Rocks his bones.' Words normally separate are hyphen- 
ated to convey a shift of accent or a shade of meaning not 
commonly implied, as 'The great Mystery of Existence 
glared-in upon him,' or, 'that strange island Iceland, — 
burst-up, the geologists tell us, by fire.' The abrupt method 
of the composition involves the constant use of the dash, as 
in the last example quoted; or of the exclamation point, 
as 'Great honour to the Fireflies. But — ! — ' These 
in themselves are small peculiarities, but they are noteworthy 
since the frequency of their occurrence individualizes the 
manner of Carlyle, giving it constant animation, nervous 
force, and, in Heroes at least, the effect of an oral delivery. 

As noticeable as these features of style, and even more 
important, is the sentence structure. The paragraphs as a 
whole are fairly regular in form, usually containing one cen- 
tral thought intelligibly amplified ; but often individual sen- 
tences defy all the accepted rules of composition and grammar. 
Carlyle has a special fondness for unfinished sentences, which, 
by reason of their very jaggedness, thrust the idea before the 
reader more strikingly than a polished statement would do. 
In the introduction to his edition of Heroes, Professor Mac- 
Mechan remarks: 'Of the nine sentences which make up 
the portrait of Dante's face and soul, four contain no verb. 



INTRODUCTION XXxIii 

assert nothing. The picture will not out of the memory, 
and yet a fundamental law of usage is violated.' Of course 
no one should cavil at ellipses which so drive a picture home 
upon the memory that it will not out ; but, strictly speaking, 
fragments of sentences are not sentences at all, and their 
employment cannot be grammatically justified. The sen- 
tences of Carlyle, when correct in structure, are typically not 
compact and pointed, but very loose and rather more often 
long than short. Allowing for the comic exaggeration, his 
description of Teufelsdrockh's sentences in Sartor Resarlus 
may be taken as a measure of his own: *0f his sentences 
perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their 
legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, but- 
tressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever 
with this or the other tag-rag hanging from them; a few 
even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed 
and dismembered.' 

In spite, however, of its many licenses of style, Heroes is 
controlled by the author's deliberate effort to modify the 
typical Carlylese. When revising the lectures for publica- 
tion, he wrote to his brother: 'The style of them requires 
to be low-pitched, as like talk as possible.' That is, he 
wished, for once, to be plain and homely in his drift ; and, 
indeed, the very excess of loose, broken, or fragmentary 
sentences, of dashes, exclamations, italicized words and the 
like, conveys much of the informality of colloquial speech. 
Moreover, in his desire to popularize, Carlyle holds his great 
learning well in check, allowing it to run but little into the 
puzzling allusions, quotations and remote analogies which 
bestrew the pages of his other books. 

On the other hand, he gives free rein to such of his natural 
tendencies as are fitting to popular discourse. Prominent 
among them is his love for concrete illustration. Abstract 
ideas engage his interest mainly when he finds them expres- 



XXXIV INTRODUCTION 

sible in some human or visual form, and therefore he lavishes 
his skill in depicting those persons or objects which are the 
best embodiment of his thought. It is this which accounts 
for his minor trick of pluralizing proper nouns, as when he 
speaks of * the Dantes, Shakespeares, Goethes,' etc., in order 
to avoid a merely lifeless classification of poets : he makes 
single vivid personalities typify a general group. It is his 
love for definite symbols which strongly attracts him, for 
example, to the fancy of Novalis that Hhere is but one 
Temple in the Universe, and that is the Body of Man ; ' or 
to the Norsemen's objective representation of life as the ash- 
tree Igdrasil, ^All Life figured by them as a Tree;' or to the 
wild Ishmaelite's intuition of a divine glory behind the bright 
star Canopus: 'To his wild heart ... it might seem a 
little eye, that Canopus, gleaming-out on him from the great 
deep Eternity, revealing the inner Splendor to him.' His 
own pictorial faculty finds a brilliant exercise in his landscape- 
pieces, such as the description of Hhat strange island Ice- 
land' and its 'wild gleaming beauties,' or the luminous 
account of the Arabian desert with its half-barbaric in- 
dwellers. Better still is his gift for delineating 'the human 
face divine.' Emerson once praised him for his 'thirsty 
eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait-painting eyes;' and, 
indeed, in his pen-pictures of individual men he is almost 
unrivaled, for he has a supreme gift for striking off imagina- 
tive epithets which illuminate the precise features, manner- 
isms, habits, moods, wherein the character of his subject 
is envisaged. Who that has read Heroes can forget the face 
of Luther 'with its huge crag-like brows and bones, the 
emblem of rugged energy;' or brave old Samuel Johnson, 
'the great dusty irascible pedagogue,' 'with his great greedy 
heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts ; stalking mournful 
as a stranger in this Earth;' or 'mean inflated gluttonous 
Bozzy;' or crazed, fanatic Rousseau, his eyes 'bewildered 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

looking, — bewildered, peering with lynx eagerness ; ' or 
swarthy Mahomet, with his ^beaming black eyes and open 
social deep soul,' and ^that vein on the brow which swelled- 
up black when he was in anger'? Finer than all these is 
the well-known portrait of Dante, which, for the right effect, 
should be read in its entirety. It is really not so much a 
sketch of a human face as a flash of revealing light across a 
mighty poet's unfathomable spirit, the stern deep heart of 
Dante and the ages stored up within it, — that ' deathless 
sorrow and pain' and 'the. known victory which is also 
deathless.' 

The finer parts of the book redeem it from any charge of 
persistent crudity, and even challenge the author's praise 
of the stylistic merits of Teuf elsdrockh : 'Occasionally 
. . . we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his 
burning Thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so 
many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor 
from Jove's head; a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque 
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; 
all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination wedded to 
the clearest intellect alternate in beautiful vicissitude.' 
There could hardly be an apter description of the admirable 
traits, not only of Sartor Resartus, but also of Heroes and 
Hero-Worship, — whose best pages are animated, indeed, 
by 'a fiery poetic emphasis,' and vivid 'with all the graces 
and terrors of a wild Imagination.' The emotional inspira- 
tion, too, of many passages gives them the roll and majesty 
of noble verse. One may almost chant the impassioned 
declamations on 'the great mystery of Time,' and the 
greater Mystery of Existence which 'glared-in' upon 
Mahomet with its terrors and splendors; or the passage 
beginning, 'This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, 
the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas.' The spirit 
of true poetry is in such utterances. They go far to explain 



XXXvi INTRODUCTION 

the opinion of Mr. Justice Stephen that Carlyle was the 
greatest poet of his age, or the similar f eehng of Augustine 
Birrell that some of the passages of The French Revolution 
and Sartor Resartus are really the sublimest poetry of 
the nineteenth century. A sympathetic attention to the 
merits of Heroes and Eero-Worship will presently reveal, 
beneath its discordant surface, a pervasive inner harmony, 
the pulse and rhythm of a virile, magnificent style. 

B, Plan 

On first reflection the plan, as well as the style, of Heroes 
and Hero-Worship seems unfinished. Carlyle's heroes are 
the great men of history, and the theme of the book is the 
influence of great men on human affairs ; but the discussion 
is limited to six types of heroes only, — heroes as gods, 
prophets, poets, priests, writers, and kings, — and it is easy 
to quarrel with the author for his omission of other equally 
important types from his list. Since his hero is always 
preeminently the thinker, it is surprising enough that he has 
no place in his category for the Hero-Philosopher. It is at 
least doubtful whether warriors and rulers, the Cromwells 
and Napoleons of history, are more valuable factors in civili- 
zation than legislators, scientists, industrial leaders, and the 
like; so that we may wonder that Carlyle elects to discuss 
^^The Hero as King,'' while he has nothing to say about 
"The Hero as Law-Maker," ''The Hero as Man of Science," 
" The Hero as Captain of Industry." It is strange, moreover, 
that the great painter or the great musician is not given a 
place beside "The Hero as Poet" and "The Hero as Man of 
Letters," that Shakespeare and Johnson should be extolled, 
Michael Angelo and Beethoven ignored. What is the cause 
of these exclusions? A summary answer would be that 
Carlyle was not interested in art, science, and industrial 



INTRODUCTION xxx^di 

progress. The deeper significance of art escaped him; he 
regarded its chief appeal as sensuous, not spiritual. Science 
and industry were to him wholly materialistic forces, and 
throughout his life the materialism of the modern world was 
the greatest rock of offense in his horizon. Philosophy, also, 
in so far as it is pure thought divorced from the practical 
life of man, did not greatly attract him. Thus it was that 
several vastly important fields of human endeavor were 
either outside the range of his observation, or awakened in 
him only a scornful interest. This partly explains the 
limits which he places upon his choice of heroes. 

But his classification was affected also by an ordinary 
custom of the lectiu*e platform: the practice of public 
lecturers to give only six addresses in any single course. If 
there had been more time at his disposal, he doubtless would 
have considered other kinds of heroes which his definitions 
may legitimately be made to cover ; but he was artificially 
restricted to a discussion of six types of heroism only, and it 
is to be assumed that he selected those t3rpes whose historic 
influence he regarded as having been preeminent. He 
believed that the commanding places in history have been 
held by great men, or heroes, in the functions of gods, 
prophets, poets, priests, writers and kings, — spiritual forces, 
all of them, ^men of light and leading,' whose genius has 
moulded the thought and destinies of the race. 

Among these varied figures Carlyle perceived a certain 
order, which determined the outer structure of the book. 
First of all he found that his types could be presented accord- 
ing to a very simple chronological scheme, and secondly, 
that such a scheme corresponds to a sort of 'descending 
scale' in hero-worship; that is, that in respect to time, 
heroism first manifests itself in the form of godhead or divinity, 
somewhat later, in the form of prophecy, still later, in the 
form of poetry, priesthood, etc., and that correspondent to 



XXXVlii INTRODUCTION 

this gradation, the hero as divinity is highly reverenced by 
men, the prophet is less reverenced than the divinity, while 
the poet, priest, writer, or king is reverenced still less than 
the prophet. This arrangement is open to some very obvious 
criticisms. For example, "The Hero as Divinity," the 
subject of the first lecture, is not an object of worship to 
primitive people only, nor does he necessarily appear in the 
early stages of a nation's life: Christ was born late in the 
history of Judea. On the other hand, the Hero-King, 
whom Carlyle treats as a modern illustration of his theme, 
is not, of course, an essentially modern product : monarchy, 
in some form, existed in the dawn of civilization, and a ruler 
was more peculiarly the center of men's interests then than 
now. Moreover, poets, priests and prophets are to be found 
in every epoch : every people has had its early bards as well 
as the poets of its maturity ; priests have served as spiritual 
mediators between man and God from time immemorial; 
Carlyle himself was a sort of modern prophet. However, 
these obvious deductions from Carlyle's programme do not 
impair its validity as a broad working basis, and he would 
hardly have maintained that it has any larger merit. It is 
true, in general, that primitive people tend to exalt their 
leaders to the heights of divinity, regarding the man of 
superior prowess or insight as superhuman and worshiping 
him as a god; that, in a somewhat later stage of national 
development, the great man is reverenced not as a god, but 
as one God-inspired, speaking with the voice of a god, that 
is, as a prophet ; and that, in the modern time, the hero is 
not worshiped as a god, or reverenced as one speaking with 
the voice of a god, but is merely admired and honored as the 
man of genius, — particularly in his capacity as poet, re- 
former-priest, man of letters, or the last, if not least, phase 
of heroism. 

The Hero sunk into a King. 



INTRODUCTION XXxix 

C Teachings 

The general plan of the book, when unfolded, is intelligible 
enough; but confusion arises again in the pursuit of its 
details. There seems to be no inherent system or logic in 
a discussion embracing such varied heroes as Mahomet, 
Dante, John Knox, Odin, Napoleon, Rousseau, and the 
rest, — men who represent widely divergent epochs, ideals, 
and kinds of achievement. One is at a loss to surmise the 
common attributes which can unite the unlettered prophet of 
a despised religion with the mystic poet of mediaeval Cathol- 
icism, the rigid expounder of Presbyterian dogma with the 
shadowy myth-god of the primitive Norsemen, the most 
astute imperialist of modern times with the half -crazed 
apostle of social democracy. Through what rational pro- 
cess may this strangely assorted company be measured by a 
single standard ? 

In the first place, these many sorts of heroes are loosely 
held within one view by Carlyle's favorite thesis that the 
history of the world essentially consists of the united biog- 
raphies of its great men : ' For, as I take it, Universal His- 
tory, the history of what man has accomplished in this 
world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have 
worked here.*^ However diverse the selected heroes may 
have been in mental and moral character or the outer circum- 
stances of their Hves, they were all 'mortals superior in 
power, courage or understanding,' and, through the posses- 
sion of their superior qualities, 'they were the leaders of 
men, these great ones ; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide 
sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men con- 
trived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing 
accomplished in the world are properly the outer material 

^ Heroes J p. i. 



xl INTRODUCTION 

result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts 
that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world.' ^ In this 
mastery of their times through their superior intellect lies 
a consistent similarity within which the lesser differences of 
Carlyle's heroes are lost. 

The second essential factor in history is Hero- Worship, 
the subserviency and reverence which the mass of smaller 
men sooner or later inevitably yields to its leaders. Hero- 
Worship is the natural and rightful allegiance of common 
mortals to what is really above them, and in its perpetuity 
lies the only safeguard for civilization. ^Thus is there a 
true religiou^ Loyalty forever rooted in the heart; nay, in 
all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less 
orthodox Hero-Worship. In which fact, that Hero- Worship 
exists, has existed and will forever exist, universally among 
Mankind, mayest thou discern the corner stone of living- 
rock whereon all Polities for the remotest time may stand 
secure.' 2 

If Carlyle's heroes are broadly similar as the makers of 
history and the objects of men's reverence, their affinity 
becomes still more apparent when they are submitted to 
his narrower tests. He regards their differences as super- 
ficial rather than vital, for it is one of the cardinal theories 
of the book that all heroes, stripped of externalities, are 
alike. ^ For at the bottom the Great Man, as he comes from 
the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing : Odin, 
Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope to make it appear that 
these are all originally of one stuff ; that only by the world's 
reception of them, and the shapes they assume, are they so 
immeasurably diverse.'^ ^The Hero can be Poet, Prophet, 
King, Priest, or what you will, according to the kind of world 
he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a 

^ Heroes y p. i. ^ Sartor Resartus, III, vii. ^ Heroes j p. 46. 



INTRODUCTION xli 

truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.'^ The 
plain inference from such extraordinary statements is that 
a ruler like Napoleon, if he had been born under the condi- 
tions surrounding Mahomet, could have become a prophet ; 
that Shakespeare, if he had lived in the days of the Puritan 
Revolution, could have become a warrior-statesman, — 
another Cromwell ; and that Cromwell, under the influences 
of Elizabethan England, could have become a great poet, 
— another Shakespeare. It would appear that the distinc- 
tions among great men arise, not from any real dissimilarity 
of gifts, but from differences in their employment of the same 
gifts. Back of the varied historic conditions which set the 
divergent types of their heroism, all great men possess the 
same fundamental quality, one deep inner source of power, 
which is the evidence of an essential kinship. 

Sincerity is the term with which Carlyle best likes to de- 
scribe this primal attribute of genius. ^I should say sin- 
cerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first charac- 
teristic of all men in any way heroic. '^ The sincerity of 
heroism, it should be understood, is not the sincerity of the 
market place: it is not merely commensurable with plain 
honesty of purpose, truthfulness of speech, and upright 
living, though it may include all these. Its springs run deeper 
than practical morals ; it is a profound and fresh realization 
of the spiritual meaning of life, a penetration into ^"the open 
secret of the Universe," — which so few have an eye for !'^ 
The ultimate truths of existence come to most of us at second- 
hand, if they come at all; the great man receives them at 
first-hand, for he lives habitually within their sphere. 'Di- 
rect from the Inner Fact of things ; — he lives, and has to 
live, in daily communion with that.'^ Genuineness or sin- 
cerity like this does not depend upon the great man himself. 

^ Heroes, p. 84. 2 /j^.^ p. 48. ^ Ibid., p. 124. * Ibid., p. 49. 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

^He cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Exist- 
ence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the 
awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he 
is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as 
Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men 
should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. 
At all moments the Flame-image glares-in upon him; un- 
deniable, there, there ! — I wish you to take this as my 
primary definition of a Great Man.' ^ 

Sincerity, as thus interpreted, is only another name for 
superior insight. ^The seeing eye,' originality, intellect 
and genius are equivalent terms variously used to denote the 
same heroic quality : the great man's ability to pierce through 
the shows of life to its inner heart. The Carlylean hero knows 
that the outer material world of the senses is delusive and 
perishable. He detects the unreality of things seen, and, in a 
degree beyond other men, he understands that the only 
potent and enduring reality is the unseen world of the spirit. 
He therefore has an immediate, steady grasp of. divine law, 
the moral order of the world. As best he can he adapts his 
own life to that law, and in one manner or another discloses 
it to his fellows. Through the force of his utterance or his 
acts, he compels men's allegiance, drawing them away from 
mere convention, or the profession of outworn creeds, and 
renewing within them a positive sense of eternal truth. 
Through such persuasions as these, he makes his thought 
the shaping influence, and himself the master, of his genera- 
tion. 

This quick sense for spiritual realities is nothing less, of 
course, than a religious inspiration. One cannot read far in 
the book without discovering that religion forms the ground- 
work of its philosophy, and that Carlyle everywhere measures 

^ Heroes, p. 48. 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

his heroes by a religious standard. He disclaims here all 
regard for orthodox expressions of belief, but he asserts with 
glowing emphasis the supreme importance of a personal 
faith: Hhe thing a man does practically lay to heart, and 
know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mys- 
terious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in 
all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines 
all the rest.'^ All of Carlyle's heroes exemplify this defini- 
tion of religion in one branch of human activity or another, 
whether it be literature, war, statesmanship, or prophecy 
itself : even Rousseau, in his own personal degeneracy the 
most unpromising of heroes, saw through the shams of his 
sceptical century, ^did once more touch upon Reality, 
struggle towards Reality,' ^ and hastened the French Revolu- 
tion, which was nothing less, in part, than a readjustment 
of society to the fundamental laws of righteousness. 

Such, in brief, are the principal teachings of Heroes and 
Hero-Worship. It has not been difficult for the critics to show 
the errors in Carlyle's thesis that history is nothing but the 
materialized thought of forceful, inspired leaders whose 
genius has moulded the fate of the masses and compelled 
their homage. Such a doctrine is contrary to nearly all 
modern expositions of history, for it ignores the evidences that 
civilization has resulted from the operation of general tend- 
encies as much as from the personal influence of great men. 
It does not sufficiently recognize the fact that Dante, Luther, 
Napoleon and the rest merely interpreted or directed vast 
racial movements which sprang, not so much from their own 
brains, as from the demands, aspirations and needs of common 
humanity. Carlyle believed that 'the Hero can be Poet, 
Prophet, King, Priest, or what you will, according to the 
kind of world he finds himself born into,' but did not see 

^ Heroes i p. 3. 2 /^/j.^ p. 201. 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

that he is altogether as much a product of his age as its 
moulder. Carlyle merely assumed that his hero is a kind of 
agent of Providence, sent, not at the call of the times, but 
when God wills, like ^the lightning out of heaven' to en- 
kindle ^ the dry dead fuel ' to which plain humanity may be 
compared. In his exaggerated reverence for individual 
genius he scorned the intelligence of the multitude, and dis- 
regarded their cooperation with their captains in effecting 
social welfare. Hence it was that he deeply distrusted popu- 
lar government. He wholly believed in the necessity of a 
one-man rule, the sway of Hhe Able Man' over the fickle 
and thoughtless multitude. 'Your noblest men at the 
summit of affairs is the ideal world of poets. ... All that 
democracy ever meant lies there, the attainment of a true 
Aristocracy or Government of the Best. Make search for 
the Able Man. How to get him is the question of questions.' 
Of course the desirability of the rule of the wise over the 
foolish is a truism which no one disputes ; but Carlyle does 
not succeed in finding a solution to his 'question of ques- 
tions.' ^It is precisely the question,' says his biographer 
Nichol, 'to which Carlyle never gives, and hardly attempts 
a reply; and his failure to answer invalidates the larger 
half of his politics.' 

In its fundamental teaching, then. Heroes and Hero-Worship 
is defective, for in holding that history is shaped by great 
men, it presents only a half-truth at best. But this saving 
half-truth is pronounced with a splendid energy, while a 
wealth of corollary ideas gives the book a various and rich 
meaning which its untenable theories do not impair. The 
lectures cannot be accepted as infallible, but they illuminate 
so many different fields of human inquiry that, as a cultural 
inspiration and guide, they are hardly to be surpassed. ' To 
go to Heroes for minute, solid, and moderate statements, as 
one would go to Gardiner or von Ranke, is a mistake^' says 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

Professor MacMechan; 'but for suggestion, and stimulus 
to seek further into the spiritual history of the race, there is 
simply no one book like it. . . . Where else between two 
covers, within such narrow compass, can be found so many 
starting points for thought on the story of mankind ? ' Much 
of its philosophy has been indistinguishably merged in the 
common fund of higher speculation, and so it has become an 
incalculable leaven in the best thinking and aspiration of our 
time. It has exerted a profound influence on many famous 
men. John Ruskin ascribed to his youthful reading of it his 
early resolution to do something and to be something in the 
world; and perhaps its freshest, most vital appeal to the 
youths of the twentieth century is that which Ruskin heard. 
It is an appeal expressly voiced by Carlyle in his lecture on 
the Hero-Priest: 'If Hero mean sincere man, why may not 
every one of us be a Hero ? A world all sincere, a believing 
world: the like^has been; the like will again be, — cannot 
help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers for 
Heroes : never could the truly Better be so reverenced as 
where all were True and Good ! ' ^ 

1 Heroes, p. 137. 



c y^ ' 



ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP 

AND 

THE HEROIC IN HISTORY 



-•o*- 



LECTURE I 

THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN 

MYTHOLOGY 

[Tuesday, 5th May 1840.] 

We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on 
Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's busi- 
ness, how they have shaped themselves in the world's his- 
tory, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did ; 
— on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and perfor- 
mance ; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human 
affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic; deserving 
quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at pres- 
ent. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as 
Universal History itself. For, as I take it. Universal His- 10 
tory, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, 
is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have 
worked he re. They were the leaders of men, these great 
ones ; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, 
of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or 
to attain J all things that we see standing accomplished in 
the world are properly the outer material result, the practical 
reaUsation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the 



2 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Great Men sent into the world : the soul of the whole world's 
history, it may justly be considered, were the history of 
these. Too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to 
in this place ! 

One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are 
profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, 

^ upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He 
is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant 
to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlight- 

loened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled 
lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the 
gift of Heaven ; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native 
original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness; — in 
whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On 
any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such 
neighbourhood for a whiles These Six classes of Heroes, 
chosen out of widely-distant countries and epochs, and 
in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we 
look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. 

20 Could we see them well, we should get some glimpses into 
the very marrow of the world's history. How happy, could 
I bA, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest 
to you the meanings of Heroism; the divine relation (for 
I may well call it such) which in all times unites a Great 
Man to other men ; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my 
subject, but so much as break ground on it ! At all events, 
I must make the attempt. 

i It is well said, in every sense, that a man^ religion is 
'the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of 

30 men's. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed 
which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign 
and, in words or otherwise, assert ; not this wholly, in many 
cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed 
creeds attain to almost all degrees of^ worth or worthlessness 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 3 

under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, 
this profession and assertion ; which is often only a profes- 
sion and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the 
mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. 
But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is 
often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less 
to others) ; the thing a man does practically lay to heart, 
and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this 
mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that 
is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively 10 
determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may 
be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the nianner it is in--- 
which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen 
Wor4d or No-World ; and I say, if you tell me what that is, 
you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the 
kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we 
inquire, therefore, first of all. What religion they had ? 
Was it Heathenism, — plurality of gods, mere sensuous rep- 
resentation of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognised 
element therein Physical Force ? Was it Christianism ; 20 
faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reahty ; 
Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on 
Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler 
supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncer- 
tainty and inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, 
any Mystery of Life except a mad one ; — doubt as to all 
this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial ? Answering of this 
question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or 
nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the 
actions they did ; their feelings were parents of their thoughts : 30 
it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined 
the outward and actual ; — their religion, as I say, was the 
great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we 
are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that re- 



4 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

ligious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is 
known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series, 
Odin the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism ; an em- 
blem to us of a most extensive province of things. Let 
us look for a little at the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary 
form of Heroism. 

Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Pagan- 
ism ; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewilder- 
ing, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusion, falsehoods 

10 and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life ! A thing 
that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, 
with incredulity, — for truly it is not easy to understand 
that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, 
believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That men should 
have worshipped their poor fellow-man as a God, and not 
him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate 
and inanimate objects ; and fashioned for themselves such 
a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the 
Universe : all this looks like an incredible fable. Neverthe- 

20 less it is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inex- 
tricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we 
are, . did actually hold by, and live at home in. This is 
strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence over the 
depths of darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in the 
heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such things were 
and are in man ; in all men ; in us too. 

Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the 
Pagan religion : mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, 
say they ; no sane man ever did believe it, — merely con- 

30 trived to persuade other men, not worthy of the name of 
sane, to believe it ! It will be often our duty to protest 
against this sort of h3^othesis about men's doings and his- 
tory; and I here, on the very threshold, protest against it 
in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 5 

man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this 
world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would 
not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound ; 
in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages 
of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery 
was never the originating influence in such things; it was 
not the health and life of such things, but their disease, 
the sure precursor of their being about to die ! Let us never 
forget this. It seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, 
that of quackery giving birth to any faith even in savage 10 
men. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to 
all things. We shall not see into the true heart of anything, 
if we look merely at the quackeries of it; if we do not reject 
the quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, 
with which our and all men's sole duty is to have done with 
them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our 
practice. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies. I 
find Grand Lamaism itself to have a kind of truth in it. 
Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical Mr. Turner's 
Account of his Embassy to that country, and see. They 20 
have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence 
sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every 
generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope ! 
At bottom still better, beHef that there is a Greatest Man; 
that he is discoverable ; that, once discovered, we ought to 
treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds ! This 
is the truth of Grand Lamaism ; the ^ discoverability ' is the 
only error here. The Thibet priests have methods of their 
own of discovering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme 
over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse 30 
than our methods — , of understanding him to be always the 
eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult 

thing to find good methods for ! We shall begin to have 

a chance of understanding Paganism, when we first admit 



6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

that to its followers it was, at one time, earnestly true. 
Let us consider it very certain that men did believe in 
Paganism; men with open eyes, sound senses, men made 
altogether like ourselves ; that we, had we been there, should 
have believed in it. Ask now, What Paganism could have 
been ? 

^/ Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attributes 
such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, 
say these theorists; a shadowing-forth, in allegorical fable, 

loin personification and visual form, of what such poetic 
minds had known and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, 
add they, with a primary law of human nature, still every- 
where observably at work, though in less important things. 
That what a man feels intensely, he struggles to speak-out 
of him, to see represented before him in \dsual shape, and 
as if with a kind of life and historical reality in it. Now 
doubtless there is such a law, and it is one of the deepest in 
human nature; neither need we doubt that it did operate 
fundamentally in this business. The hypothesis which 

20 ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly to this agency, I call 
a Httle more respectable; but I cannot yet call it the true 
hypothesis. Think, would we believe, and take with us as 
our life-guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport? Not sport 
but earnest is what we should require. It is a most earnest 
thing to be alive in this world ; to die is not sport for a man. 
Man's life never was a sport to him ; it was a stern reality, 
altogether a serious matter to be alive ! 

I find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are 
on the way towards truth in this matter, they have not 

30 reached it either. Pagan Religion is indeed an Allegory, 
a Symbol of what men felt and knew about the Universe ; 
and all Religions are symbols of that, altering always as 
that alters: but it seems to me a radical perversion, and 
even inversion, of the business, to put that forward as the 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 7 

origin and moving cause, when it was rather the result and 
termination. To get beautiful allegories, a perfect poetic 
symbol, was not the want of men ; but to know what they 
were to believe about this Universe, what course they were 
to steer in it; what, in this mysterious Life of theirs, they 
had to hope and to fear, to do and to forbear doing. The 
Pilgrim^s Progress is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just and 
serious one : but consider whether Bunyan's Allegory could 
have preceded the Faith it symbolises ! The Faith had to 
be already there, standing believed by everybody ; — of 10 
which the Allegory could then become a shadow ; and, with 
all its seriousness, we may say a sportful shadow, a mere 
play of the Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact and 
scientific certainty which it poetically strives to emblem. 
The Allegory is the product of the certainty, not the pro- 
ducer of it; not in Bunyan's nor in any other case. For 
Paganism, therefore, we have still to inquire, Whence 
came that scientific certainty, the parent of such a bewil- 
dered heap of allegories, errors and confusions? How was 
it, what was it ? 20 

Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend ' explaining,' 
in this place, or in any place, such a phenomenon as that "" 
far-distant distracted cloudy imbroglio of Paganism, — more 
like a cloudfield than a distant continent of firm land and 
facts ! It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought to 
understand that this seeming cloudfield was once a reality ; 
that not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and de- 
ception was the origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe 
idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories: men 
in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an 30 
instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let 
us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory 
one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far- 
off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain 



8 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

so much as this at least, That there was a kind of fact at 
the heart of them ; that they too were not mendacious and 
distracted, but in their own poor way true and sane ! 

^ You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had 
grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought 
on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What 
would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we 
daily witness with indifference ! With the free open sense 
of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole 

lo heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it 
well to be Godlike, his soul would fall down in worship 
before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the 
primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude 
men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this 
child-man of Plato's. Simple, open as a child, yet with 
the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no 
name to him; he had not yet united under a name the 
infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which 
we now collectively name Universe, Nature, or the like, — 

20 and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep- 
hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or 
formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beauti- 
ful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to 
the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This 
green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, 
rivers, many-sounding seas ; — that great deep sea of azure 
that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the 
black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, 
now hail and rain ; what is it ? Ay, what ? At bottom we 

30 do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by 
our superior insight that we escape the difiiculty; it is by 
our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It 
is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 9 

round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrap- 
page of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that fire of 
the black thunder-cloud ^electricity,' and lecture learnedly 
about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk : but 
what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither 
goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor 
science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infini- 
tude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on 
which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This 
world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle ; 10 
wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will 
think of it. 

That great mystery of Time, were there no other; the 
illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, 
rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, 
on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, 
like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever 
very literally a miracle ; a thing to strike us dumb, — for we 
have no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah me — 
what could the wild man know of it ; what can we yet 20 
know ? That it is a Force, and thousandfold Complexity of 
Forces ; a Force which is not we. That is all ; it is not we, , 
it is altogether different from us. Force, Force, every- 
where Force ; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre 
of that. ^ There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but 
has Force in it: how else could it rot?' Nay surely, to 
the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must 
be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force, 
which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as 
Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it ? God's creation, 30 
the religious people answer ; it is the Almighty God's ! 
Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, wdth scientific no- 
menclatures, experiments and what-not, as if it were a poor 
dead thing, to be bottled-up in Leyden jars and sold over 



lO HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he 
will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living 
thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing ; towards which 
the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is 
awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if 
not in words, then in silence. 

But now I remark farther : What in such a time as ours 
it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the 
stripping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomen- 

lo clatures and scientific hearsays, — this, the ancient earnest 
soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. 
The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was 
then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He 
stood bare before it face to face. ^ All was Godlike or God :' 
— Jean Paul still finds it so; the giant Jean Paul, who 
has power to escape out of hearsays : but there then were 
no hearsays. Canopus shining-down over the desert, with 
its blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like bright- 
ness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce 

20 into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was 
guiding through the solitary waste there. To his wild 
heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for any feeling, it 
might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing-out on him 
from the great deep Eternity ; revealing the inner Splendour 
to him. Cannot we understand how these men worshipped 
Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the 
stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. 
Worship is transcendent wonder ; wonder for which there is 
now no limit or measure ; that is worship. To these primeval 

30 men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them 
were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God. 

And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To 
us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is 
not a God made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes ? 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY II 

We do not worship in that way now : but is it not reckoned 
still a m^rit, proof of what we call a 'poetic nature/ that 
we recognise how every object has a divine beauty in it; 
how every object still verily is 'a window through which 
we may look into Infinitude itself? He that can discern 
the loveUness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of 
Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what 
he does, — in their own fashion. That they did it, in what 
fashion soever, was a merit ; better than what the entirely 
stupid man did, what the horse and camel did, — namely, lo 
nothing ! 

But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are 
emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more so than 
any of them is man such an emblem. You have heard of 
St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in reference to the She- 
kinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, 
among the Hebrews; "The true Shekinah is Man !" Yes, 
it is even so : this is no vain phrase ; it is veritably so. The 
essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself "I,'' 
— ah, what words have we for such things ? — is a breath 20 
of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. 
This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as 
a vesture for that Unnamed ? ' There is but one Temple 
in the Universe,' says the devout Novalis, 'and that is the 
Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form. 
Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation 
in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on 
a human body ! ' This sounds much like a mere flourish 
of rhetoric ; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn 
out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words 30 
as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are 
the miracle of miracles, — the great inscrutable mystery of 
God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of 
it ; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. 



12 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Well ; these truths were once more readily felt than now. 
The young generations of the world, who had in them the 
freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest 
men, who did not think that they had finished-ofi all things 
in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, 
but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder : 
they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; 
— they, without being mad, could worship Nature, and 
man more than anything else in Nature. Worship, that 

lois, as I said above, admire without limit: this, in the full 
use of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they could 
do. I consider Hero-worship to be the grand modifying 
element in that ancient system of thought. What I called 
the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out 
of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or 
natural object, was a root or fibre of a root ; but Hero- 
worship is the deepest root of all ; the tap-root from which 
in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown. 
And now if worship even of a star had some meaning 

20 in it, how much more might that of a Hero ! Worship of 
a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say 
great men are still admirable ; I say there is, at bottom, 
nothing else admirable ! No nobler feeling than this of 
admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast 
of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying 
influence in man's life. Religion I find stand upon it; not 
Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions, — all 
religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate 
admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest 

30 godlike Form of Man, — is not that the germ of Christianity 
itself ? The greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we do 
not name here ! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred 
matter ; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a princi- 
ple extant throughout man's whole history on earth. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 1 3 

Or coming into lower, less i^wspeakable provinces, is not 
all Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith is loyalty 
to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what 
therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but 
an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the 
truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship. All 
dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are 
what we may call a Herosuchy (Government of Heroes), — 
or a Hierarchy, for it is ^sacred' enough withal! The 
Duke means Dux, Leader ; King is Kon-ning, Kan-ningy 10 
Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some 
representation, not msupportably inaccurate, of a graduated 
Worship of Heroes; — reverence and obedience done to men 
really great and wise. Not msupportably inaccurate, I 
say ! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all 
representing gold ; — and several of them, alas, always are 
forged notes. We can do with some forged false notes; 
with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of 
them forged ! No : there have to come revolutions then ; 
cries of Democracy, Liberty and Equality, and I know not 20 
what : — the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for 
them, people take to crying in their despair that there is no 
gold, that there never was any ! — ^Gold,' Hero-worship, is 
nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot 
cease till man himself ceases. 

I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the 
thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and 
finally ceased. This, for reasons which it will be worth 
while some time to inquire into, is an age that as it were 
denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness 30 
of great men. Show our critics a great man, a Luther for 
example, they begin to what they call ^account' for him; 
not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him, — and 
bring him out to be a little kind of man ! He was the ^ crea- 



14 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

ture of the Time/ they say; the Time called him forth, 
the Time did everything, he nothing — but what we the 
little critic could have done too ! This seems to me but 
melancholy work. The Time call forth? Alas, we have 
known Times call loudly enough for their great man; but 
not find him when they called ! He was not there ; Provi- 
dence had not sent him; the Time, calling its loudest, 
had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would 
not come when called. 

lo For if we will think of it, no Time need have gone to 
ruin, could it have found a man great enough, a man wise 
and good enough : wisdom to discern truly what the Time 
wanted, valour to lead it on the right road thither; these 
are the salvation of any Time. But I liken common languid 
Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their 
languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, 
impotently crumbling-down into ever worse distress towards 
final ruin ; — all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for 
the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great 

20 man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the 
lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all 
can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has 
once struck on it, into fire like his own. The dry mould- 
ering sticks are thought to have called him forth. They 
did want him greatly ; but as to calling him forth — ! — 
Those are critics of small vision, I think, who cry: '^See, 
is it not the sticks that made the fire?" No sadder proof 
can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief 
in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a genera- 

3otion than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, 
with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the 
last consummation of unbelief. In all epochs of the world's 
history, we shall find the Great Man to have been the indis- 
pensable saviour of his epoch; — the lightning, without 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 



15 



which the fuel never would have burnt. The History of 
the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great 
Men. 

Such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief 
and universal spiritual paralysis: but happily they cannot 
always completely succeed. In all times it is possible for 
a man to arise great enough to feel that they and their 
doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. And what is notable, 
in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of liv- 
ing men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for 10 
Great Men; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, how- 
ever dim and perverted it may be. Hero-worship endures 
forever while man endures. Boswell venerates his Johnson, 
right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbeliev- 
ing French believe in their Voltaire; and burst-out round 
him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his 
life when they 'stifle him under roses.' It has always 
seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire. Truly, 
if Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, 
then we may find here in Voltaireism one of the lowest ! 20 
He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, does again 
on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever 
were so httle prone to admire at all as those French of Vol- 
taire. Persiflage was the character of their whole mind; 
adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see ! The old 
man of Ferney comes up to Paris ; an old, tottering, infirm 
man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind 
of Hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and 
injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high 
places ; — in short that he too, though in a strange way, 30 
has fought like a vaHant man. They feel withal that, if 
persiflage be the great thing, there never was such a persi- 
fleur. He is the realised ideal of every one of them; the 
thing they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the 



1 6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

most French. He is properly their god, — such god as 
they are fit for. Accordingly all persons, from the Queen 
Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they 
not worship him ? People of quality disguise themselves as 
tavern- waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, 
orders his Postillion, "Fa bon train; thou art driving M. 
de Voltaire.'' At Paris his carriage is Hhe nucleus of a 
comet, whose train fills whole streets.' The ladies pluck 
a hair or two froni his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic. There 

10 was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, 
that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler. 
Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from 
the divine Founder of Christianity to the withered Pontiff 
of Encyclopedism, in all times and places, the Hero has 
been worshipped. It will ever be so. We all love great 
men ; love, venerate and bow down submissive before great 
men: nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? 
Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made 
higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? 

20 No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. 
And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical 
logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any 
Time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loy- 
alty and worship that is in man. In times of unbelief, 
which soon have to become times of revolution, much 
down-rushing sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to every- 
body. For myself in these days, I seem to see in this inde- 
structibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant 
lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things 

30 cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbhng and 
even crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolu- 
tionary ages, will get down so far; no farther. It is an 
eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to build 
themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 1 7 

worships Heroes ; that we all of us reverence and must ever 
reverence Great Men : this is, to me, the living rock amid 
all rushings-down whatsoever ; — the one fixed point in 
modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless 
and shoreless. 

^ So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, 
but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of 
old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the 
workings of God ; the Hero is still worshipable : this, under 
poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions 10 
have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think Scandi- 
navian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any 
other. It is, for one thing, the latest ; it continued in these 
regions of Europe till the eleventh century: eight-hundred 
years ago the Norwegians were still worshippers of Odin. 
It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men 
whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still 
resemble in so many ways. Strange : they did believe that, 
while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this 
poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable 20 
means to do it; for there is another point of interest in 
these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been pre- 
served so well. 

In that strange island Iceland, — burst-up, the geologists 
say, by fire from the bottom of the sea ; a wild land of bar- 
renness and lava ; swallowed many months of every year in 
black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summer- 
time; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North 
Ocean; with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur- 
pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic 30 
battle-field of Frost and Fire ; — where of all places we 
least looked for Literature or written memorials, the record 
of these things was written down. On the seaboard of this 



1 8 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

wild land is a rim of grassy country where cattle can subsist, 
and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; 
and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep 
thoughts in them, and uttered musically their thoughts. 
Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst-up from the 
sea, not been discovered by the Northmen ! The old Norse 
Poets were many of them natives of Iceland. 

Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who 
perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, collected 

lo certain of their old Pagan songs, just about becoming obso- 
lete then, — Poems or Chants of a mythic, prophetic, 
mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse 
critics call the Elder or Poetic Edda, Edda, a word of 
uncertain etymology, is thought to signify Ancestress, 
Snorro Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely 
notable personage, educated by this Saemund's grandson, 
took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put to- 
gether, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose 
Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new 

20 fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed 
really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might 
call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, 
pleasant reading still : this is the Younger or Prose Edda, 
By these and the numerous other Sagas, mostly Icelandic, 
with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zeal- 
ously in the North to this day, it is possible to gain some 
direct insight even yet; and see that old Norse system of 
Belief, as it were, face to face. Let us forget that it is 
erroneous Religion; let us look at it as old Thought, and 

30 try if we cannot sympathise with it somewhat. 

The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythol- 
ogy I find to be Impersonation of the visible workings of 
Nature. Earnest simple recognition of the workings of 
Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 1 9 

and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they won- 
dered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion. The dark 
hostile Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as ^Jotuns, ' 
Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, 
Fire, Sea-tempest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers 
again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire 
of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell 
apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell 
above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; 
Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the 10 
Jotuns. - 

Curious all this ; and not idle or inane, if we look at the 
foundation of it ! The power of Fire, or Flame, for instance, 
which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby 
hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder 
that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old North- 
men, Loke, a most swift subtle Demon, of the brood of the 
Jotuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say 
some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never had 
seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when 20 
you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too 
no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide 
that Flame is a wonder. What is Flame ? — Frost the old 
Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the 
Giant Thrym, Hrym; or Rime, the old word now nearly 
obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. 
Rime was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a liv- 
ing Jotun or Devil ; the monstrous Jotun Rime drove home 
his Horses at night, sat ^combing their manes,' — which 
Horses were Hail-Clouds, or fleet Frost-Winds. His Cows 30 
— No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are 
Icebergs: this Hymir ^ looks at the rocks' with his devil- 
eye, and they split in the glance of it. 

Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or 



20 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

resinous ; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor, — 
God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was 
his wrath ; the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing- 
down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of 
Heaven is the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of 
Thor : he urges his loud chariot over the mountain-tops, — 
that is the peal; wrathful he 'blows in his red beard/ — 
that is the rustling stormblast before the thunder begin. 
Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and 

lo benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found 
to resemble Christ), is the Sun, — beautifulest of visible 
things ; wondrous too, and divine still, after all our Astron- 
omies and Almanacs ! But perhaps the notablest god we 
hear tell-of is one of whom Grimm the German Etymolo- 
gist finds trace: the God Wunsch, or Wish. The God 
Wish; who could give us all that we wished! Is not this 
the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man ? 
The rudest ideal that man ever formed; which still shows 
itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. Higher 

20 considerations have to teach us that the God Wish is not 
the true God. 

Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for ety- 
mology's sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jo tun Aegir, a very 
dangerous Jotun ; — and now to this day, on our river 
Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the 
River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or 
eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; 
they cry out, "Have a care, there is the Eager coming!'' 
Curious ; that word surviving, like the peak of a submerged 

30 world ! The oldest Nottingham bargemen had believed in 
the God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in good 
part is Danish, Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish and 
Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial 
one, — as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But al) 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 21 

over our Island we are mingled largely with Danes proper, 
— from the incessant invasions there were: and this, of 
course, in a greater proportion along the east coast; and 
greatest of all, as I find, in the North Country. From the 
Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the com- 
mon people is still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Ger- 
manism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are 
* Normans,' Northmen, — if that be any great beauty ! — 
l/Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark 
at present so much ; what the essence of Scandinavian and lo 
indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of 
Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies, — as 
Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the 
infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, 
on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the 
Norse System something very genuine, very great and man- 
like. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the 
light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes 
this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine 
Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the 20 
things about them ; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspec- 
tion of the things, — the first characteristic of all good 
Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as 
in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and 
rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. 
It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear 
smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods 
^brewing ale' to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea- Jo tun; 
sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jotun 
country ; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the Pot on 30 
his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it, — quite lost 
in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels ! A kind 
of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterises 
that Norse System ; enormous force, as yet altogether untu- 



22 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

tored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider 
only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, hav- 
ing got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made by 'warm wind,' 
and much confused work, out of the conflict of Frost and 
Fire, — determined on constructing a world with him. His 
blood made the Sea ; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his 
bones; of his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods'- 
Dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity, 
and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper- 

lo Brobdignagian business ! Untamed Thought, great, giant- 
like, enormous ; — to be tamed in due time into the compact 
greatness, not giantlike, but godlike and stronger than giant- 
hood, of the Shakespeares, the Goethes ! — Spiritually as well 
as bodily these men are our progenitors. 

I like, too, that representation they have of the Tree 
Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, 
the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep-down in the 
kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk reaches up heaven- 
high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe : it is the 

20 Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, 
sit Three Nomas, Fates, — the Past, Present, Future ; water- 
ing its roots from the Sacred Well. Its 'boughs,' with their 
buddings and disleafings, — events, things suffered, things 
done, catastrophes, — stretch through all lands and times. 
Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act 
or word? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle 
of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of 
old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion rustling 
through it ; — or stormtost, the stormwind howling through 

30 it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of 
Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; 
what was done, what is doing, what will be done; 'the 
infinite conjugation of the verb To do.^ Considering how 
human things circulate, each inextricably in communion 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 23 

with all, — how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, 
not from Ulfila the Moesogoth only, but from all men since 
the first man began to speak, — I find no similitude so true 
as this of a Tree. Beautiful ; altogether beautiful and great. 
The 'Machine of the Universe,' — alas, do but think of that 
in contrast ! 

Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of nature ; 
different enough from what we believe of Nature. Whence 
it specially came, one would not like to be compelled to 
say very minutely ! One thing we may say : It came from 10 
the thoughts of Norse men ; — from the thought, above all, 
of the first Norse man who had an original power of think- 
ing. The First Norse ^man of genius,' as we should call 
him ! Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, 
with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may 
feel ; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such 
as men only feel ; — till the great Thinker came, the original 
man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the 
slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the 
way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, 20 
all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The 
Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, 
round his Thought ; answering to it. Yes, even so ! Joyful 
to men as the dawning of day from night ; — i^ it not, indeed, 
the awakening for them from no-being into being, from 
death into life ? We still honour such a man ; call him Poet, 
Genius, and so forth : but to these wild men he was a very 
magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for 
them ; a Prophet, a God ! — Thought once awakened does 
not again slumber ; unfolds itself into a System of Thought ; 30 
grows, in man after man, generation after generation, — till 
its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can 
grow no farther, but must give place to another. 



24 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

For the Norse people, the man now named Odin, and 
Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, 
and Captain of soul and of body ; a Hero, of worth immeas- 
urable; admiration for whom, transcending the known 
bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of ar- 
ticulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet mirac- 
ulous ? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse 
heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of 
this Universe ; given assurance to them of their own destiny 

lo there ? By him they know now what they have to do here, 
what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, 
melodious by him ; he first has made Life alive ! — We may 
call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or 
whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a 
man among men. His view of the Universe once promul- 
gated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, 
keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all 
minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; 
at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every 

20 epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is 
it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world ! — 

One other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a 
little, the confusion of these Norse Eddas. They are not 
one coherent System of Thought ; but properly the summa- 
tion of several successive systems. All this of the old Norse 
Belief which is flung-out for us, in one level of distance in the 
Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does not at 
all stand so in the reality. It stands rather at all manner of 
distances and depths, of successive generations since the Belief 

30 first began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of 
them, contributed to that Scandinavian System of Thought ; 
in ever-new elaboration and addition, it is the combined work 
of them all. What history it had, how it changed from shape 
to shape, by one thinker's contribution after another, till it 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 25 

got to the full final shape we see it under in the Edda, no man 
will now ever know ; its Councils of Trebisond, Councils of 
Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo 
in the dark night ! Only that it had such a history we can all 
know. Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing 
he thought-of was a contribution, accession, a change or 
revolution made. Alas, the grandest ^revolution' of all, 
the one made by the man Odin himself, is not this too sunk 
for us like the rest ! Of Odin what history ? Strange 
rather to reflect that he had a history ! That this Odin, in 10 
his wild Norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his 
rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us ; with our 
sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features ; — intrinsically all 
one as we : and did such a work ! But the work, much of it, 
has perished ; the worker, all to the name. ' ' Wednesday, ' ' men 
will say to-morrow ; Odin's day ! Of Odin there exists no 
history ; no document of it ; no guess about it worth repeating. 
t/Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief 
business style, writes down, in his Heimskringla, how Odin 
was a heroic Prince, in the Black-Sea region, with Twelve 20 
Peers, and a great people straitened for room. How he 
led these A sen (Asiatics) of his out of Asia ; settled them in 
the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented 
Letters, Poetry and so forth, — and came by and by to be 
worshipped as Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve 
Peers made into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like himself : 
Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very 
curious Northman of that same century, is still more unhesi- 
tating ; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every indi- 
vidual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event in 30 
Denmark or elsewhere. Torfaeus, learned and cautious, 
some centuries later, assigns by calculation a date for it: 
Odin, he says, came into Europe about the Year 70 before 
Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere uncertainties, 



2 6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far, very 
far beyond the Year 70 ! Odin's date, adventures, whole 
terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk from us 
forever into unknown thousands of years. 

Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far as to 
deny that any man Odin ever existed. He proves it by 
etymology. The word Wuotan, which is the original form 
of Odin, a word spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over 
all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which 

10 connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin voder e, 
with the English wade and suchlike, — means primarily 
Movement, Source of Movement, Power ; and is the fit name 
of the highest god, not of any man. The word signifies 
Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, German, and all 
Teutonic Nations ; the adjectives formed from it all signify 
divine, supreme, or something pertaining to the chief god. 
Like enough ! We must bow to Grimm in matters etymolog- 
ical. Let us consider it fixed that Wuotan means Wading, 
force of Movement. And now still, what hinders it from being 

20 the name of a Heroic Man and Mover, as well as of a god ? 
As for the adjectives, and words formed from it, — did not 
the Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope, get into 
the habit of saying ^ a Lope flower,' ^ a Lope dama,' if the flower 
or woman were of surpassing beauty? Had this lasted. 
Lope would have grown, in Spain, to be an adjective signifying 
godlike also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his Essay on Language, 
surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed pre- 
cisely in that way: some very green thing, chiefly notable 
for its greenness, got the appellative name Green, and then the 

30 next thing remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, 
was named the green tree, — as we still say ^the steam coach,' 
'four-horse coach,' or the like. All primary adjectives, 
according to Smith, were formed in this way ; were at first 
substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a man for 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 27 

etymologies like that ! Surely there was a First Teacher and 
Captain ; surely there must have been an Odin, palpable to 
the sense at one time ; no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh 
and blood ! The voice of all tradition, history or echo of 
history, agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, 
to assure us of this. 

How the man Odin came to be considered a god, the chief 
god ? — that surely is a question which nobody would wish 
to dogmatise upon. I have said, his people knew no limits 
to their admiration of him ; they had as yet no scale to meas- 10 
ure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart's-love 
of some greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, 
till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought ! 
Or what if this man Odin, — since a great deep soul, with the 
afflatus and mysterious tide of vision and impulse rushing on 
him he knows not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror 
and wonder to himself, — should have felt that perhaps he 
was divine; that he was some effluence of the 'Wuotan,' 
' Movement, Supreme Power and Divinity, of whom to his 
rapt vision all Nature was the awful Flame-image; that 20 
some effluence of Wuotan dwelt here in him ! He was not 
necessarily false ; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest 
he knew. A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he 
is, — alternates between the highest height and the lowest 
depth ; can, of all things, the least measure — Himself ! 
What others take him for, and what he guesses that he may 
be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to 
determine one another. With all men reverently admiring 
him ; with his own wild soul full of noble ardours and affec- 
tions, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light ; 30 
a divine Universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, 
and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could 
he think himself to be? ^^ Wuotan?" All men answered, 
"Wuotan !" . 



28 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

And then consider what mere Time will do in such cases ; 
how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold 
greater when dead. What an enormous camera-obscura 
magnifier is Tradition ! How a thing grows in the human 
Memory, in the human Imagination, when love, worship 
and all that lies in the human Heart, is there to encourage 
it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without 
date or document, no book, no Arundel-marble ; only here 
and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why, in thirty 

loor forty years, were there no books, any great man would 
grow mythic, the contemporaries who had seen him, being 
once all dead. And in three-hundred years, and in three- 
thousand years — ! — To attempt theorising on such matters 
would profit little : they are matters which refuse to be theo- 
rented and diagramed ; which Logic ought to know that she 
cannot speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the utter- 
most distance, some gleam as of a small real light shining 
in the centre of that enormous camera-obscura image; to 
discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and noth- 

20 ing, but a sanity and something. 

This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse 
mind, dark but living, waiting only for light ; this is to me 
the centre of the whole. How such light will then shine out, 
and with wondrous thousandfold expansion spread itself, 
in forms and colours, depends not on it, so much as on the 
National Mind recipient of it. The colours and forms of your 
light will be those of the cut-glass it has to shine through. — 
Curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is 
modelled by the nature of the man ! I said, The earnest man, 

30 speaking to his brother men, must always have stated what 
seemed to him a. fact, a real Appearance of Nature. But the 
way in which such Appearance or fact shaped itself, — what 
sort of fact it became for him, — was and is modified by his 
own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, ever- 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 29 

operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the 
Phantasy of Himself; this world is the multiplex ^ Image of 
his own Dream.' Who knows to what unnameable subtleties 
of spiritual law all these Pagan Fables owe their shape ! The 
number Twelve, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, 
quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable 
number, — this was enough to determine the Signs of the 
Zodiac, the number of Odin's Sons, and innumerable other 
Twelves. Any vague rumour of number had a tendency to 
settle itself into Twelve. So with regard to every other 10 
matter. And quite unconsciously too, — with no notion of 
building-up ' Allegories ' ! But the fresh clear glance of those 
First Ages would be prompt in discerning the secret relations 
of things, and wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in 
the Cestus of Venus an everlasting aesthetic truth as to the 
nature of all Beauty ; curious : — but he is careful not to 
insinuate that the old Greek Mythists had any notion of 

lecturing about the ^Philosophy of Criticism' ! On the 

whole, we must leave those boundless regions. Cannot we 
conceive that Odin was a reality? Error indeed, error 20 
enough: but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory afore- 
thought, — we will not believe that our Fathers believed in 
these. 

Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. Runes, 
and the miracles of ^ magic' he worked by them, make a 
great feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandinavian 
Alphabet ; suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Let- 
ters, as well as ' magic,' among that people ! It is the greatest 
invention man has ever made, this of marking-down the 
unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is 30 
a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. 
You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atah- 
ualpa, the Peruvian King ; how he made the Spanish Soldier 
who was guarding him scratch Dios on his thumb-nail, that 



30 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether 
such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought Letters among 
his people, he might work magic enough ! 
t/ Writing by Runes has some air of being original among 
the Norsemen: not a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native 
Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin in- 
vented Poetry ; the music of human speech, as well as that 
miraculous runic marking of it. Transport yourselves into 
the early childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning- 

lo light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance 
as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning 
to think, to be ! Wonder, hope ; infinite radiance of hope 
and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the hearts of 
these strong men ! Strong sons of Nature ; and here was not 
only a wild Captain and Fighter; discerning with his wild 
flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and 
doing it ; but a Poet too, all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, 
great devout Thinker and Inventor, — as the truly Great 
Man ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points ; in the soul and 

20 thought of him first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi- 
articulate way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open 
to take in this great Universe, and man's Life here, and utter 
a great word about it. A Hero, as I say, in his own rude 
manner ; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we 
still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these 
wild Norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have made of 
him ! To them, as yet without names for it, he was noble and 
noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; Wuotafij the greatest of all. 
Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself. In- 

30 trinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same 
sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great thought in 
the wild deep heart of him ! The rough words he articulated, 
are they not the rudimental roots of those English words 
we still use? He worked so, in that obscure element. But 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 



31 



he was as a light kindled in it ; a light of Intellect, rude Noble- 
ness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet ; a Hero, 
as I say : and he had to shine there, and make his obscure 
element a little lighter, — as is still the task of us all. 

We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman ; the finest 
Teuton whom that race had yet produced. The riide Norse 
heart burst-up into boundless admiration round him; into 
adoration. He is as a root of so many great things; the 
fruit of him is found growing, from deep thousands of years, 
over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, 10 
as I said, is it not still Odin's Day? Wednesbury, Wans- 
borough, Wanstead, Wandsworth : Odin grew into England 
too, these are still leaves from that root ! He was the Chief 
God to all the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern Norseman; 
— in such way did they admire their Pattern Norseman; 
that was the fortune he had in the world. 

Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there 
is this huge Shadow of him which still projects itself over the 
whole History of his People. For this Odin once admitted 
to be God, we can understand well that the whole Scandina- 20 
vian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it might 
before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether 
differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What 
this Odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, 
the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and carried forward. 
His way of thought became their way of thought : — such, 
under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker 
still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous 
camera-obscura shadow thrown upwards from the dead 
deeps of the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, 30 
is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the Por- 
traiture of this man Odin ? The gigantic image of his natural 
face, legible or not legible there, expanded and confused in 
that manner ! Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No 



32 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

great man lives in vain. The History of the world is but 
the Biography of great men. 

To me there is something very touching in this primeval 
figure of Heroism ; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire 
reception of a Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless 
in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some 
shape or other perennial as man himself. If I could show 
in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, 
That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's 

lo history here in our world, — it would be the chief use of this 
discoursing at present. We do not now call our great men 
Gods, nor admire without limit ; ah no, with limit enough ! 
But if we have no great men, or do not admire at all, — that 
were a still worse case. 

This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse 
way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting oneself there, 
has an indestructible merit for us. A rude childHke way of 
recognising the divineness of Nature, the divineness of 
Man ; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, gianthke ; betokening 

20 what a giant of a man this child would yet grow to ! — It 
was a truth, and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled 
voice of the long-buried generations of our own Fathers, 
calling out of the depths of ages to us, in whose veins their 
blood still runs: ^^This then, this is what we made of the 
world: this is all the image and notion we could form to 
ourselves of this great mystery of a Life and Universe. 
Despise it not. You are raised high above it, to large free 
scope of vision ; but you too are not yet at the top. No, your 
notion too, so much enlarged, is but a partial, imperfect one ; 

30 that matter is a thing no man will ever, in time or out of 
time, comprehend; after thousands of years of ever-new 
expansion, man will find himself but struggHng to compre- 
hend again a part of it : the thing is larger than man, not to 
be comprehended by him ; an Infinite thing !" 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 



33 



The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan 
Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of 
Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious 
invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round 
him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the 
Scandinavian than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity 
is the great characteristic of it. Superior sincerity (far 
superior) consoles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. 
Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old 
Northmen were looking into Nature with open eye and lo 
soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; 
with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in 
a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, 
true old race of men. Such recognition of Nature one finds 
to be the chief element of Paganism: recognition of Man, 
and his Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to 
be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, 
indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; 
a great land mark in the religious development of Mankind. 
Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, 20 
wonders and worships over those ; not till a later epoch does 
he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the 
distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shall and Thou 
shall nol. 

With regard to all these fabulous deUneations in the 
Edda, I will remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, 
that most probably they must have been of much newer 
date; most probably, even from the first, were compara- 
tively idle for the old Norseman, and as it were a kind of 
Poetic sport. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said 30 
above, cannot be religious Faith; the Faith itself must 
first be there, then Allegory enough will gather round it, 
as the fit body round its soul. The Norse Faith, I can well 
suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while it lay mainly 



34 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about itself, 
still less to sing. 

Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all that fan- 
tastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, in their musical 
Mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have 
was probably not much more than this : of the Valkyrs and 
the Hall of Odin; of an inflexible Destiny; and that the 
one thing needful for a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs 
are Choosers of the Slain : a Destiny inexorable, which it 

lois useless tr3dng to bend or soften, has appointed who is 
to be slain; this was a fundamental point for the Norse 
beUever ; — as indeed it is for all earnest men everywhere, 
for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It lies at 
the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of 
which his whole system of thought is woven. The Valkyrs; 
and then that these Choosers lead the brave to a heavenly 
Hall of Odin; only the base and slavish being thrust else- 
whither, into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess : I take 
this to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They 

20 understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be 
brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but 
despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Con- 
sider too whether there is not something in this ! It is an 
everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of 
being brave. Valour is still value. tThe first duty for a 
man is still that of subduing Fear. We must get rid of 
Fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are 
slavish, not true but specious ; his very thoughts are false, 
he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear 

sounder his feeU Odin's creed, if we disentangle the real 
kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be 
valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a 
man, — trusting imperturbably in the appointment and 
choice of the upper Powers ; and, on the whole, not fear at 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 35 

all. ^OTow and always, the completeness of his victory over 
Fear will determine how much of a man he is^ 

It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of the old 
Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and 
misery not to die in battle ; and if natural death seemed to 
be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that 
Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, 
about to die, had their body laid into a ship ; the ship sent 
forth, with sails set and slow fire burning it; that, once 
out at sea, it might blaze-up in flame, and in such manner ic 
bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the 
ocean ! Wild bloody valour ; yet valour of its kind ; better, 
I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an indom- 
itable rugged energy ! Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy 
them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying 
the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things; 

— progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons ! No Homer 
sang these Norse Sea-kings ; but Agamemnon's was a small 
audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them ; 

— to Hrolf 's of Normandy, for instance ! Hrolf, or RoUo 20 
Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in govern- 
ing England at this hour. 

Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving 
and battling, through so many generations. It needed to 
be ascertained which was the strongest kind of men; who 
were to be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sover- 
eigns, too, I find some who got the title Wood-cutter; Forest- 
feUing Kings. Much Ues in that. I suppose at bottom 
many of them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though 
the Skalds talk mainly of the latter, — misleading certain 30 
critics not a little ; for no nation of men could ever live by 
fighting alone ; there could not produce enough come out of 
that ! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the 
right good forest-feller, — the right good improver, discerner, 



36 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

doer and worker in every kind; for true valour, different 
enough from ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate 
kind of valour that; showing itself against the untamed 
Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer 
Nature for us. In the same direction have not we their 
descendants since carried it far ? May such valour last for- 
ever with us ! 

That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice and 
heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his 

lo People the infinite importance of Valour, how man thereby 
became a god ; and that his People, feeling a response to it 
in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and thought 
it a message out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling 
it them: this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the 
Norse Religion, from which all manner of mythologies, sym- 
bolic practices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas 
would naturally grow. Grow, — how strangely ! I called it 
a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of 
Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive; consider 

20 that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind 
of the whole Norse People, longing only to become articu- 
late, to go on articulating ever farther ! The living doctrine 
grows, grows ; — like a Banyan-tree ; the first seed is the 
essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the 
earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, 
we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent 
of it all. Was not the whole Norse Religion, accordingly, 
in some sense, what we called Hhe enormous shadow of 
this man's likeness ' ? Critics trace some affinity in some 

30 Norse mythuses, of the Creation and suchlike, with those 
of the Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla, 'Hcking the rime 
from the rocks,' has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo 
Cow, transported into frosty countries. Probably enough; 
indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have a 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 



37 



kindred with the remotest lands, with the eariiest times. 
Thought does not die, but only is changed. The first man 
that began to think in this Planet of ours, he was the beginner 
of all. And then the second man, and the third man ; — 
nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, 
teaches men his way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own 
likeness over sections of the History of the World. 

Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this Norse 
Mythology I have not room to speak; nor does it concern 
us much. Some wild Prophecies we have, as the Voluspa in lo 
the Elder Edda; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline sort. But they 
were comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who 
as it were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds ; 
and it is their songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, 
I suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbolising, 
as our modern Painters paint, when it was no longer from 
the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This is 
everywhere to be well kept in mind. 

Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give 
one no notion of it ; — any more than Pope will of Homer. 20 
It is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, 
shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us : no ; rough 
as the North rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a 
heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humour and 
robust mirth in the middle of these fearful things. The 
strong old Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities ; 
they had not time to tremble. I like much their robust 
simphcity; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor 
'draws down his brows' in a veritable Norse rage; 'grasps 
his hammer till the knuckles grow white,'' Beautiful traits 30 
of pity too, an honest pity. Balder ' the white God ' dies ; the 
beautiful, benignant ; he is the Sungod. They try all Nature 
for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends 



38 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Hermoder to seek or see him : nine days and nine nights he 
rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; 
arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof: the Keeper says, 
"Yes, Balder did pass here ; but the Kingdom of the Dead is 
down yonder, far towards the North.'' Hermoder rides on ; 
leaps Hell-gate, Hela's gate ; does see Balder, and speak with 
him : Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable ! Hela will 
not, for Odin or any God, give him up. The beautiful and 
gentle has to remain there. His Wife had volunteered to go 

lo with him, to die with him. They shall forever remain there. 
He sends his ring to Odin ; Nanna his wife sends her thimble to 
Frigga, as a remembrance — Ah me ! — 

For indeed Valour is the fountain of Pity too ; — of Truth, 
and all that is great and good in man. The robust homely 
vigour of the Norse heart attaches one much, in these delinea- 
tions. Is it not a trait of right honest strength, says Uhland, 
who has written a fine Essay on Thor, that the old Norse 
heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god ? That it is not 
frightened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer- 

20 heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder 
withal ! The Norse heart loves this Thor and his hammer- 
bolt; sports with him. Thor is Summer-heat; the god of 
Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant's 
friend ; his true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, Manual 
Labour. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual 
work, scorns no business for its plebeianism ; is ever and anon 
travelling to the country of the Jotuns, harrying those chaotic 
Frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening and dam- 
aging them. There is a great broad humour in some of these 

30 things. 

Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir's 
Caldron, that the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge 
Giant enters, his gray beard all full of hoar-frost ; splits pillars 
with the very glance of his eye; Thor, after much rough 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 39 

tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; the ^handles 
of it reach down to his heels.' The Norse Skald has a kind of 
loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, 
the critics have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored 
Brobdignag genius, — needing only to be tamed-down ; 
into Shakspeares, Dantes, Goethes ! It is all gone now, that 
old Norse work, — Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack 
the Giant-killer : but the mind that made it is here yet. How 
strangely things grow, and die, and do not die ! There are 
twigs of that great world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously 10 
traceable. This poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miracu- 
lous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, 
he is one. Hynde Etin, and still more decisively Red Etin of 
Irelandj in the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from 
Norseland; Etin is evidently a Jotun. Nay, Shakspeare's 
Hamlet is a twig too of this same world-tree ; there seems no 
doubt of that. Hamlet, Amleth, I find, is really a mythic 
personage ; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned Father, poisoned 
asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a Norse mythus ! 
Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it a Danish history ; Shak- 20 
speare, out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig 
of the world-tree that has grown, I think ; — by nature or 
accident that one has grown ! 

In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them, an 
inward perennial truth and greatness, — as, indeed, all 
must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition 
alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, 
but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplain- 
ing melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free 
glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have 30 
seen, these brave old Northmen, what meditation has taught 
all men in all ages. That this world is after all but a show, — 
a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls 
see into that, — the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Phi- 



40 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

losopher, — the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever 
he may be : 

^ We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' 

One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the Outer Garden, 
central seat of Jo tun-land), is remarkable in this respect. 
Thialfi was with him, and Loke. After various adventures, 
they entered upon Giant-land ; wandered over plains, wild 
uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At nightfall 
they noticed a house ; and as the door, which indeed formed 

loone whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It 
was a simple habitation ; one large hall, altogether empty. 
They stayed there. Suddenly in the dead of the night loud 
noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer ; stood in 
the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran 
hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in 
that rude hall ; they found a little closet at last, and took 
refuge there. Neither had Thor any battle : for, lo, in 
the morning it turned-out that the noise had been only 
the snoring of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the 

20 Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and 
this that they took for a house was merely his Glove, thrown 
aside there ; the door was the Glove- wrist ; the little closet 
they had fled into was the Thumb ! Such a glove ; — I 
remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a 
thumb, and the rest undivided : a most ancient, rustic glove ! 
Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, 
however, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of 
Skrymir ; determined at night to put an end to him as he 
slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the Giant's 

30 face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The 
Giant merely awoke ; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a 
leaf fall? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again 
slept ; a better blow than before ; but the Giant only mur- 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 41 

mured, Was that a grain of sand ? Thor's third stroke was 
with both his hands (the 'knuckles white' I suppose), and 
seemed to dint deep into Skrymir's visage ; but he merely 
checked his snore, and remarked. There must be sparrows 
roosting in this tree, I think ; what is that they have dropt ? 
— At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to 
'strain your neck bending back to see the top of it,' 
Skrymir went his ways. Thor and his companions were 
admitted; invited to take share in the games going on. 
To Thor, for his part, they handed a Drinking-horn; it 10 
was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one 
draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor drank ; 
but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, 
they told him : could he lift that Cat he saw there ? Small 
as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength 
could not ; he bent-up the creature's back, could not raise 
its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. 
Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people ; there is an 
Old Woman that will wrestle you ! Thor, heartily ashamed, 
seized this haggard Old Woman ; but could not throw her. 20 

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, 
escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: ''You 
are beaten then : — yet be not so much ashamed ; there was 
deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to 
drink was the Sea; you did make it ebb; but who could 
drink that, the bottomless ! The Cat you would have 
lifted, — why, that is the Midgard-snake, the Great World- 
serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up the whole 
created world ; had you torn that up, the world must have 
rushed to ruin ! As for the Old Woman, she was Time, 30 
Old Age, Duration : with her what can wrestle ? No man 
nor no god with her ; gods or men, she prevails over all ! 
And then those three strokes you struck, — look at these 
three valleys; your three strokes made these!" Thor 



42 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

looked at his attendant Jotun : it was Skrymir ; — it was, 
say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky Earth in person, and 
that ^oYt-house was some Earth-cavern I But Skrymir 
had vanished ; Utgard with its skyhigh gates, when Thor 
grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air ; only 
the Giant's voice was heard mocking: ^^ Better come no 
more to Jotunheim !'' — 

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, 
not of the prophetic and entirely devout : but as a mythus 

lois there not real antique Norse gold in it? More true 
metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in many a famed 
Greek Mythus shaped far better ! A great broad Brobdig- 
nag grin of true humour is in this Skrymir ; mirth resting 
on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tem- 
pest : only a right valiant heart is capable of that. It is 
the grim humour of our ow^n Ben Jonson, rare old Ben; 
runs in the blood of us, I fancy : for one catches tones of it, 
under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods. 
That is also a very striking conception that of the Rag- 

20 narok J Consummation, or Twilight of the Gods. It is in the 
Voluspa Song ; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The 
Gods and Jotuns, the divine Powers and the chaotic brute 
ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, 
meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel ; 
World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; 
mutually extinctive ; and ruin, ^twilight' sinking into dark- 
ness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe 
with its Gods is sunk ; but it is not final death : there is to 
be a new Heaven and a new Earth ; a higher supreme God, 

30 and Justice to reign among men. Curious : this law of 
mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost 
thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers 
in their rude style ; and how, though all dies, and even 
gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 



43 



new-birth into the Greater and the Better ! It is the fun- 
damental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living 
in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; 
may still see into it. 

And now, connected with this, let us glance at the last 
my thus of the appearance of Thor ; and end there. I fancy 
it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing 
protest against the advance of Christianity, — set forth 
reproachfully by some Conservative Pagan. King Olaf 
has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing lo 
Christianity; surely I should have blamed him far more 
for an under-zeal in that! He paid dear enough for it ; 
he died by the revolt of his Pagan people, in battle, in the 
year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that Drontheim, where the 
chief Cathedral of the North has now stood for many cen- 
turies, dedicated gratefully to his memory as Saint Olaf. 
The mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the 
Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort along the 
shore of Norway, from haven to haven ; dispensing justice, 
or doing other royal work : on leaving a certain haven, it 20 
is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red 
beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers 
address him ; his answers surprise by their pertinency and 
depth : at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's 
conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along 
the beautiful shore ; but after some time, he addresses King 
Olaf thus : ^^ Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun 
shining on it there ; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you ; 
and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with 
the rock Jo tuns, before he could make it so. And now you 30 
seem minded to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care ! '' 
said the stranger, drawing-down his brows ; — and when 
they looked again, he was nowhere to be found. — This is 
the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world ! 



44 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, 
without unveracity on the part of any one ? It is the way 
most Gods have come to appear among men : thus, if in 
Pindar's time ^Neptune was once seen at the Nemean 
Games,' what was this Neptune too but a 'stranger of noble 
grave aspect,' — fit to be 'seen'! There is something 
pathetic, tragic for me in this last voice of Paganism. 
Thor is vanished, the whole Norse world has vanished; 
and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that pass 

lo away the highest things. All things that have been in this 
world, all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish : 
we have our sad farewell to give them. 

That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impres- 
sive Consecration of Valour (so we may define it), sufl5ced 
for these old valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valour 
is not a bad thing ! We will take it for good, so far as it 
goes. Neither is there no use in knowing something about 
this old Paganism of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and 
combined with higher things, it is in us yet, that old Faith 

20 withal ! To know it consciously, brings us into closer and 
clearer relation with the Past, — with our own possessions 
in the Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is 
the possession of the Present; the Past had always some- 
thing true, and is a precious possession. In a different 
time, in a different place, it is always some other side of 
our common Human Nature that has been developing 
itself. The actual True is \he sum of all these; not any 
one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is 
hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow 

30 them. ''To which of these Three Religions do you spe- 
cially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all 
the Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three; for 
they by their union first constitute the True Religion." 



LECTURE S 

THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET*. ISLAM 
[Friday, 8th May 1840J 

From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scan- 
dinavians in the North, we advance to a very different 
epoch of religion, among a very different people : Mahom- 
etanism among the Arabs. A great change ; what a change 
and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition 
and thoughts of men ! 

The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fel- 
low-men ; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the 
second phasis of Hero-worship : the first or oldest, we 
may say, has passed away without return ; in the history 10 
of the world there will not again be any man, never so 
great, whom his fellow-men will take for a god. Nay we 
might rationally ask. Did any set of human beings ever 
really think the man they saw there standing beside them 
a god, the maker of this world ? Perhaps not : it was 
usually some man they remembered, or had seen. But 
neither can this any more be. The Great Man is not 
recognised henceforth as a god any more. 

It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great 
Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to 20 
know what he is, or how to account of him and receive 
him ! The most significant feature in the history of an k 
epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. 1 
Ever, to the true instincts of men, there is something god- 
like in him. Whether they shall take him to be a god, to 

45 



46 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

be a prophet, or what they shall take him to be ? that is 
ever a grand question ; by their way of answering that, we 
shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of 
these men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great 
Man, as he comes from the hand of Nature, is ever the 
same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, Burns; I 
hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one 
stuff ; that only by the world's reception of them, and the 
shapes they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. 

lo The worship of Odin astonishes us, — to fall prostrate 
before the Great Man, into deliquium of love and wonder 
over him, and feel in their hearts that he was a denizen of 
the skies, a god ! This was imperfect enough : but to wel- 
come, for example, a Burns as we did, was that what we 
can call perfect ? The most precious gift that Heaven can 
give to the Earth; a man of ^genius' as we call it; the 
Soul of a Man actually sent down from the skies with a 
God's-message to us, — this we waste away as an idle arti- 
ficial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into 

20 ashes, wreck and ineffectuality : such reception of a Great 
Man I do not call very perfect either ! Looking into the 
heart of the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a 
still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfec- 
tions in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method 
itself ! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love 
and admiration, was not good ; but such unreasoning, nay 
irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse ! 
— It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship : 
different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, 

30 the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is 
to do it well. 

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent 
Prophet ; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by 
no means the truest of Prophets ; but I do esteem him a 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 47 

true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, 
any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him 
I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us 
try to understand what he meant with the world; what 
the world meant and means with him, will then be a 
more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about 
Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood 
incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and 
fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. Thdi 
lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man,fo 
are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired 
of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, 
trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an 
angel dictating to him ? Grotius answered that there was 
no proof ! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word 
this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred- 
and-eighty millions of men these twelve-hundred years. 
These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God as 
well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe 
in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word 20 
whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece 
of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of 
the Almighty have lived by and died by ? I, for my part, 
cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most 
things sooner than that. One would be entirely at a loss 
what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and 
were sanctioned here. 

Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would 
attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let 
us disbelieve them wholly ! They are the product of an 30 
Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual 
paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men : more 
godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this 
Earth. A false man found a religion ? Why, a false man 



48 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

cannot build a brick house ! If he do not know and follow 
truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he 
works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. 
It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred- 
and-eighty millions ; it will fall straightway. A man must 
conform himself to Nature's laws, be verily in communion 
with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer 
him, No, not at all ! Speciosities are specious — ah me ! 
— a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, 

lo do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged 
bank-note ; they get it passed out of their worthless hands : 
others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts-up in 
fire-flames, French Revolutions and suchlike, proclaiming 
with terrible veracity that forged notes are forged. 

But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to 
assert that it is incredible he should have been other than 
true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and 
of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, 
Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is 

20 first of all in right earnest about it ; what I call a sincere 
man. I should say sincerity^ a deep, great, genuine sincer- 
ity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. 
Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere ; ah no, that is a 
very poor matter indeed ; — a shallow braggart conscious 
sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man's 
sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious 
of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of ^sincerity; 
for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for 
one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sin- 

30 cere, far from that ; perhaps does not ask himself if he is 
so : I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on 
himself ; he cannot help being sincere ! The great Fact of 
Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get 
out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 49 

made ; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and won- 
derful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. 
Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain 
show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares- 
in upon him ; undeniable, there, there ! — I wish you to 
take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A 
little man may have this, it is competent to all men that 
God has made : but a Great Man cannot be without it. 

Such a man is what we call an original man ; he comes 
to us at first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite 10 
Unknown with tidings to us. We may call him Poet, 
Prophet, God ; — in one way or other, we all feel that the 
words he utters are as no other man's words. Direct from 
the Inner Fact of things ; — he lives, and has to live, in 
daily communion with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from 
him ; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following hearsays ; 
it glares-in upon him. Really his utterances, are they not 
a kind of ^ revelation ; ' — what we must call such for want 
of some other name ? It is from the heart of the world 
that he comes ; he is portion of the primal reality of things. 2c 
God has made many revelations : but this man too, has 
not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The 
'inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:' 
we must listen before all to him. 

This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an 
Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious 
schemer; we cannot conceive him so. The rude message 
he delivered was a real one withal ; an earnest confused 
voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not 
false, nor his workings here below ; no Inanity and Simula- 30 
crum ; a fiery mass of Life cast-up from the great bosom of 
Nature herself. To kindle the world; the world's Maker 
had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, 



5a\ HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well 
proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. 

On the whole, we make too much of faults ; the details 
of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The* 
greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of noney 
Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might 
know better. Who is called there 'the man according to 
God's own heart'? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen 
into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of 

lo sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this 
your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must 
say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what 
are the outward details of a life ; if the inner secret of it, 
the remorse, temptations, true, often-bafHed, never-ended 
struggle of it, be forgotten ? ' It is not in man that walketh 
to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance 
the most divine ? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same 
supercilious consciousness of no sin ; — that is death ; the 
heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and 

20 fact ; is dead : it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's 
life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I 
consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral 
progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will 
ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human 
soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, 
sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle never 
ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable 
purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature ! Is not a man's 
walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? 

30 Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he 
has to struggle onwards ; now fallen, deep-abased ; and 
ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to 
rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle 
he a faithful unconquerable one : that is the question of 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 5 1 

questions. We will put-up with many sad details, if the 
soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach 
us what it is. I believe we misestimate Mahomet's faults 
even as faults : but the secret of him will never be got by 
dwelling there. We will leave all this behind us ; and 
assuring ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask 
candidly what it was or might be. 

These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a 
notable people. Their country itself is notable; the fit 
habitation for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock-moun- 10 
tains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips 
of verdure : wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty ; 
odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. 
Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, 
like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. 
You are all alone there, left alone with the Universe ; by 
day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radi- 
ance ; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such 
a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of 
men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most 20 
meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Per- 
sians are called the French of the East ; we will call the 
Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people ; a people 
of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these : the 
characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius. The wild 
Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having 
right to all that is there ; were it his worst enemy, he will 
slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospi- 
tality for three days, will set him fairly on his way ; — and 
then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. In 30 
words too, as in action. They are not a loquacious people, 
taciturn rather ; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. 
An earnest, truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, 



52 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

of Jewish kindred : but with that deadly terrible earnest- 
ness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, 
brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had * Poetic contests' 
among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at 
Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and 
there, when the merchandising was done. Poets sang for 
prizes : — the wild people gathered to hear that. 

One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest ; the outcome of 
many or of all high qualities : what we may call religiosity. 

loFrom of old they had been zealous worshippers, according 
to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; 
worshipped many natural objects, — recognised them as 
symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. 
It was wrong ; and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works 
are still in a sense symbols of God. Do we not, as I urged, 
still account it a merit to recognise a certain inexhaustible 
significance, 'poetic beauty' as we name it, in all natural 
objects whatsoever? A man is a poet, and honoured, for\ 
doing that, and speaking or singing it, — a kind of diluted \ 

20 worship. They had many Prophets, these Arabs ; Teachers 
each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. But 
indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, still 
palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and noble- 
mindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? 
Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Book of J oh was 
written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from 
all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written 
with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew ; such 
a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or 

30 sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book ; all men's Book ! 
It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem, 
— man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. 
And all in such free flowing outlines ; grand in its sincerity, 
in its simplicity ; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcile- 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 53 

ment. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding 
heart. So true everyway; true eyesight and vision for all 
things ; material things no less than spiritual : the Horse, — 
^hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?^ — he 'laughs at 
the shaking of the spear ! ' Such living likenesses were never 
since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; 
oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind ; — so soft, 
and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its 
seas and stars ! There is nothing written, I think, in the 
Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. — 10 

^/^o the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal 
objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the 
building called Caabah at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus men- 
tions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, 
most honoured temple in his time ; that is, some half-century 
before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likeli- 
hood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, 
some man might see it fall out of Heaven ! It stands now 
beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built over both. 
A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing 20 
out like life from the hard earth ; — still more so in those 
hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. 
The Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of 
the waters, zem-zem; they think it is the Well which Hagar 
found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness : the aerolite 
and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, 
for thousands of years. A curious object, that Caabah ! 
There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering 
the Sultan sends it yearly; ^twenty-seven cubits high;' 
with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows 30 
of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted 
again this night, — to ghtter again under the stars. An 
authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the Keblah of 
all Moslem : from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of 



54 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

innumerable praying men are turned towards it, five times, 
this day and all days: one of the notablest centres in the 
Habitation of Men. 

It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah 
Stone and Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes 
of Arabs thither, that Mecca took its rise as a Town. A 
great town once, though much decayed now. It has no 
natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow 
amid bare barren hills, at a distance from the sea; its pro- 

lo visions, its very bread, have to be imported. But so many 
pilgrims needed lodgings : and then all places of pilgrimage 
do, from the first, become places of trade. The first day 
pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where men see 
themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can 
accomplish other objects which depend on meeting together. 
Mecca became the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed 
the chief staple and warehouse of whatever Commerce 
there was between the Indian and the Western countries, 
Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one time a population 

20 of 100,000 ; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and Western 
products ; importers for their own behoof of provisions and 
corn. The government was a kind of irregular aristocratic 
republic, not without a touch of theocracy. Ten Men of a 
chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, were Governors of 
Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish were the 
chief tribe in Mahomet's time ; his own family was of that 
tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut-asunder 
by deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments 
by one or several : herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally 

30 robbers too ; being of tenest at war one with another, or with 
all : held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting 
at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled 
in common adoration ; — held mainly by the inward indis- 
soluble bond of a common blood and language. In this way 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 55 

had the Arabs Uved for long ages, unnoticed by the world; 
a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day 
when they should become notable to all the world. Their 
Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much 
was getting into confusion and fermentation among them. 
Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever transacted 
in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, 
at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all 
people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached 
into Arabia too ; and could not but, of itself, have produced 10 
fermentation there. < 

It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the 
year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He 
was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said ; 
though poor, connected with the chief persons of his coun- 
try. Almost at his birth he lost his Father ; at the age of 
six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, 
her worth and sense : he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, 
an old man, a hundred years old. A good old man : Maho- 
met's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favourite son. 20 
He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century 
old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of 
Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy greatly ; used to 
say. They must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing 
in their kindred was more precious than he. At his death, 
while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge 
to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now 
was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just and rational 
man as everything betokens, Mahomet was brought-up in 
the best Arab way. 30 

Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on 
trading journeys and suchlike ; in his eighteenth year one 
finds him a fighter following his Uncle in war. But perhaps 



56 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

the most significant of all his journeys is one we find noted 
as of some years' earlier date: a journey- to the Fairs of 
Syria. The young man here first came in contact with 
a quite foreign world, — with one foreign element of endless 
moment to him : the Christian Religion. I know not what 
to make of that 'Sergius, the Nestorian Monk/ whom Abu 
Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with ; or how much 
any monk could have taught one still so young. Probably 
enough it is greatly exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. 

lo Mahomet was only fourteen ; had no language but his own : 
much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible 
whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; 
glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken-in, and 
lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way 
into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys 
to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. 
One other circumstance we must not forget : that he had 
no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning 
none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced 

20 into Arabia ; it seems to be the true opinion that Mahomet 
never could write ! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, 
was all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, 
from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could 
take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, 
if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except 
by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain 
rumour of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could 
know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or 
at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good 

30 as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame- 
beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly 
communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep 
down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so, 
— alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 57 

But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thought- 
ful man. His companions named him ^Al Amin, The 
Faithful.' A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he 
did, in what he spake and thought. They noted that he 
always meant something. A man rather taciturn in speech ; 
silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, 
wise, sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light 
on the matter. This is the only sort of speech worth speak- 
ing ! Through life we find him to have been regarded as 
an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, 10 
sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, 
jocose even ; — a good laugh in him withal : there are men 
whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them ; who can- 
not laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty : his fine saga- 
cious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black 
eyes ; — I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which 
swelled-up black when he was in anger: like the ^horse- 
shoe vein ' in Scott's Redgauntlet. It was a kind of feature in 
the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; 
Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear. A sponta- 20 
neous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man ! Full of 
wild faculty, fire and light ; of wild worth, all uncultured ; 
working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. 

How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her 
Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs 
of Syria ; how he managed all, as one can well understand, 
with fidelity, adroitness ; how her gratitude, her regard for 
him grew : the story of their marriage is altogether a grace- 
ful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was 
twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems 30 
to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome 
way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and 
her alone. It goes greatly against the impostor theory, the 
fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely 



58 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was 
done. He was forty before he talked of any mission from 
Heaven. All his irregularities, real and supposed, date from 
after his fiftieth year, when the good Kadijah died. All 
his 'ambition,' seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an 
honest life; his 'fame,' the mere good opinion of neighbours 
that knew him, had been sufficient hitherto. Not till he was 
already getting old, the prurient heat of his life all burnt out, 
and peace growing to be the chief thing this world could 

logive him, did he start on the 'career of ambition;' and, be- 
lying all his past character and existence, set-up as a wretched 
empty charlatan to acquire what he could now no longer 
enjoy ! For my share, I have no faith whatever in that. 

Ah no: this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, with 
his beaming black eyes and open social deep soul, had other 
thoughts in him than ambition. A silent great soul; he 
was one of those who cannot but be in earnest ; whom Nature 
herself has appointed to be sincere. While others walk 
in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, 

20 this man could not screen himself in formulas ; he was alone 
with his own soul and the reality of things. The great 
Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared-in upon him, with 
its terrors, with its splendours ; no hearsays could hide that 
unspeakable fact, "Here am I!" Such sincerity, as we 
named it, has in very truth something of divine. The word 
of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature's own Heart. 
Men do and must listen to that as to nothing else ; — all else 
is wind in comparison. From of old, a thousand thoughts, 
in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man : 

30 What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, 
which men name Universe ? What is Life ; what is Death ? 
What am I to believe ? What am I to do? The grim rocks 
of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes 
answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 59 

with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no 
answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration 
dwelt there, had to answer ! 

It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; 
which we too have to ask, and answer. This wild man felt 
it to be of infinite moment ; all other things of no moment 
whatever in comparison. The jargon of argumentative 
Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of 
Arab Idolatry: there was no answer in these. A Hero, 
as I repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may 10 
call first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole Hero- 
ism, That he looks through the shows of things into things. 
Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: 
all these are good, or are not good. There is something be- 
hind and beyond all these, which all these must correspond 
with, be the image of, or they are — Idolatries; *bits of 
black wood pretending to be God;' to the earnest soul a 
mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so gilded, 
waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing for this 
man. Though all men walk by them, what good is it ? 20 
The great Reality stands glaring there upon him. He there 
has to answer it, or perish miserably. Now, even now, or 
else through all Eternity never ! Answer it ; thou must find 
an answer. — Ambition ? What could all Arabia do for 
this man; with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian 
Chosroes, and all crowns in the Earth ; — what could they 
all do for him ? It was not of the Earth he wanted to hear 
tell; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. 
All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would 
they in a few brief years be ? To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, 30 
and have a bit of gilt wood put into your hand, — will that 
be one's salvation ? I decidedly think, not. We will leave 
it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; 
not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us. 



6o HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



5li 



Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the 
month Ramadhan, into soKtude and silence ; as indeed was 
the Arab custom ; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, 
above all, would find natural and useful. Communing with 
his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himselfllj 
silent ; open to the * small still voices : ' it was a right natural 
custom ! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having 
withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during 
this Ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, and meditation 

lo on those great questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, 
who with his household was with him or near him this year, 
That by the unspeakable special favour of Heaven he had 
now found it all out ; was in doubt and darkness no longer, 
but saw it all. That all these Idols and Formulas were 
nothing, miserable bits of wood ; that there was One God in 
and over all ; and we must leave all Idols, and look to Him. 
That God is great ; and that there is nothing else great ! 
He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are not real ; He is real. 
He made us at first, sustains us yet ; we and all things are 

20 but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the 
Eternal Splendour. 'Allah akbar, God is great;' — and 
then also 'Islam,'' That we must submit to God. That our 
whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatso- 
ever He do to us. For this world, and for the other ! The 
thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than death, 
shall be good, shall be best ; we resign ourselves to God. — 
^If this be Islam,'' says Goethe, 'do we not all live in I slam? ^ 
Yes, all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. It 
has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely 

30 to submit to Necessity, — Necessity will make him submit, 
— but to know and believe well that the stern thing which 
Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing 
wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning 
this great God's- World in his small fraction of a brain; to 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 6l 

know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, 
a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good ; — that his part 
in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout 
silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as un- 
questionable. 

I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man 
is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards 
sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great 
deep Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, tem- 
porary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations ; he is vie- lo 
torious while he cooperates with that great central Law, 
not victorious otherwise : — and surely his first chance of 
cooperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know 
with his whole soul that it is; that it is good, and alone good ! 
This is the soul of Islam ; it is properly the soul of Christianity; 

— for Islam is definable as a confused form of Christianity ; 
had Christianity not been, neither had it been. Christianity 
also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God. We are 
to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood, give ear to no vain 
cavils, vain sorrows and wishes : to know that we know 20 
nothing ; that the worst and crudest to our eyes is not what 

it seems ; that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as 
sent from God above, and say, It is good and wise, God is 
great! "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." 
Islam nieans in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. 
This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed 
to our Earth. 

Such hght had come, as it could, to illuminate the dark- 
ness of this wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling splendour 
as of life and Heaven, in the great darkness which threatened 30 
to be death : he called it revelation and the angel Gabriel ; 

— who of us yet can know what to call it? It is the * in- 
spiration 'of the Almighty' that giveth us understanding. 
To know ; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic 



62 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

" act, — of which the best Logics can but babble on the sur- 
face. 'Is not Belief the true god-announcing Miracle?' 
says Novalis. — That Mahomet's whole soul, set in flame 
with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if 
it were important and the only important thing, was very 
natural. That Providence had unspeakably honoured him 
by revealing it, saving him from death and darkness; that 
he therefore was bound to make known the same to all 
creatures: this is what was meant by 'Mahomet is the 

lo Prophet of God ; ' this too is not without its true meaning. — 
The good Kadi j ah, we can fancy, listened to him with 
wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: Yes, it was 
true this that he said. One can fancy too the boundless 
gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she 
had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word 
he now spoke was the greatest. 'It is certain,' says Novalis, 
'my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul 
will believe in it.' It is a boundless favour. — He never 
forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha, his 

20 young favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished 
herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, 
through her whole long life ; this young brilliant Ayesha was, 
one day, questioning him: "Now am I not better than 
Kadijah ? She was a widow ; old, and had lost her looks : 
you love me better than you did her?" — "No, by Allah !" 
answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed in me 
when none else would believe. In the whole world I had 
but one friend, and she was that !" — Seid, his Slave, also 
believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu 

3oThaleb's son, were his first converts. 

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that ; but the 
most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three 
years, I think, he had gained but thirteen followers. His 
progress was slow enough. His encouragement to go on. 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 63 

was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man 
in such a case meets. After some three years of small 
success, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an enter- 
tainment; and there stood-up and told them what his 
pretension was : that he had this thing to promulgate abroad 
to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: 
which of them would second him in that ? Amid the doubt 
and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient 
of the silence, started-up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce 
language. That he would ! The assembly, among whom 10 
was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to 
Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly 
man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise 
against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them ; the as- 
sembly broke-up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not 
a laughable thing ; it was a very serious thing ! As for this 
young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, 
as he shows himself, now and always afterwards ; full of 
affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; 
brave as a lion ; yet with a grace, a truth and affection 20 
worthy of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination 
in the Mosque at Bagdad ; a death occasioned by his own 
generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others : he 
said. If the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon 
the Assassin ; but if it did, then they must slay him straight- 
way, that so they two in the same hour might appear before 
God, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one ! 

Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers 
of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two 
men of influence had joined him : the thing spread slowly, 30 
but it was spreading. Naturally he gave offence to every- 
body : Who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all ; 
that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood ! 
Abu Thaleb the good Uncle spoke with him : Could he not 



64 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

be silent about all that ; believe it all for himself, and not 
trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger himself and 
them all, talking of it? Mahomet answered: If the Sun 
stood on his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering 
him to hold his peace, he could not obey ! No : there was 
something in this Truth he had got which was of Nature 
herself; equal in rank to Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever 
thing Nature had made. It would speak itself there, so 
long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, 

loand all Koreish and all men and things. It must do that, 
and could do no other. Mahomet answered so; and, they 
say, ^ burst into tears.' Burst into tears: he felt that Abu 
Thaleb was good to him ; that the task he had got was no 
soft, but a stern and great one. 

He went on speaking to who would Ksten to him; pub- 
lishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to 
Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that. Con- 
tinual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended 
him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; 

20 but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had 
to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. 
The Koreish grew ever angrier ; laid plots, and swore oaths 
among them, to put Mahomet to death with their own 
hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. 
Mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his 
outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. He had to 
hide in caverns, escape in disguise ; fly hither and thither ; 
homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than once it 
seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a 

30 straw, some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether 
Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not 
been heard of at all. But it was not to end so. 
l/ln the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies 
all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 65 

tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible 
at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet fled to the place 
then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; 
the place they now call Medina, or 'Medinat al Nabi, the 
City of the Prophet,' from that circumstance. It lay some 
200 miles off, through rocks and deserts ; not without great 
difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, 
and found welcome. The whole East dates its era from 
this Flight, Hegira as they name it : the Year i of this Hegira 
is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's life. He 10 
was now becoming an old man ; his friends sinking round 
him one by one ; his path desolate, encompassed with danger : 
unless he could find hope in his own heart, the outward face 
of things was but hopeless for him. It is so with all men in 
the Hke case. Hitherto Mahomet had professed to pubUsh 
his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. 
But now, driven foully out of his native country, since un- 
just men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's- 
message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let 
him five if he kept speaking it, — the wild Son of the Desert 20 
resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab. If the 
Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to 
be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not 
Hsten to these ; would trample them down by sheer violence, 
steel and murder : well let steel try it then ! Ten years more 
this Mahomet had; all of fighting, of breathless impetuous 
toil and struggle ; with what result we know. 

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Reli- 
gion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have 
to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself 30 
peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet 
withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or false- 
hood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The 
sword indeed : but where will you get your sword ! Every 



66 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. 
In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man 
alone of the whole world believes it ; there is one man against 
all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with 
that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword ! 
On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We 
do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always 
disdained the sword, when once it had got one. Charle- 
magne's conversion of the Saxons was not by preaching. 

lo I care little about the sword : I will allow a thing to struggle 
for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or imple- 
ment it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and 
pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, 
and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it ; very sure that 
it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not de- 
serve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put 
away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature 
herself is umpire, and can do no wrong : the thing which is 
deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and 

20 not the other will be found growing at last. 

Here however, in reference to much that there is in Ma- 
homet and his success, we are to remember what an umpire 
Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and 
tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the 
Earth's bosom: your wheat may be mixed with chaff, 
chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable 
rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; 
she grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she silently ab- 
sorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The 

30 yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent 
about all the rest, — has silently turned all the rest to some 
benefit too, and makes no complaint about it ! So every- 
where in Nature ! She is true and not a lie ; and yet so 
great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 67 

a thing only that it be genuine of heart ; she will protect it 
if so ; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the 
things she ever gave harbour to. Alas, is not this the his- 
tory of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the 
world ? The body of them all is imperfection, an element of 
light in darkness : to us they have to come embodied in mere 
Logic, in some merely scientific Theorem of the Universe; 
which cannot be complete; which cannot but be found, 
one day, iw-complete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. 
The body of all Truth dies; and yet in all, I say, there isic 
a soul which never dies; which in new and ever-nobler 
embodiment lives immortal as man himself ! It is the way 
with Nature. The genuine essence of Truth never dies. 
That it be genuine, a voice from the great Deep of Nature, 
there is the point at Nature's judgment-seat. What we 
call pure or impure, is not with her the final question. Not 
how much chaff is in you ; but whether you have any wheat. 
Pure? I might say to many a man: Yes, you are pure; 
pure enough ; but you are chaff, — insincere hypothesis, 
hearsay, formality ; you never were in contact with the 20 
great heart of the Universe at all ; you are properly neither 
pure nor impure; you are nothing, Nature has no business 
with you. 

Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christianity; and 
really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it 
was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind 
than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain 
janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full 
of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead ! The truth 
of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood : but 3c 
the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it 
succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, 
but a living kind; with a heart-life in it; not dead, chop- 
ping barren logic merely ! Out of all that rubbish of Arab 



68 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, 
rumours and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with their idle 
wiredrawings, this wild man of the Desert, with his wild 
sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his great flash- 
ing natural eyesight, had seen into the kernel of the matter. 
Idolatry is nothing: these Wooden Idols of yours, ^ye rub 
them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them,' — these 
are wood, I tell you ! They can do nothing for you ; they 
are an impotent blasphemous pretence ; a horror and abomi- 

lo nation, if ye knew them. God alone is ; God alone has power ; 
He made us. He can kill us and keep us alive : 'Allah akbar, 
God is great.' Understand that His will is the best for you ; 
that howsoever sore to flesh-and-blood, you will find it the 
wisest, best : you are bound to take it so ; in this world and in 
the next, you have no other thing that you can do ! 

And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and 
with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form 
soever it came to them, I say it was well worthy of being 
believed. In one form or the other, I say it is still the one 

20 thing worthy of being believed by all men. Man does hereby 
become the high-priest of this Temple of a World. He is 
in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; 
cooperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: 
I know, to this day, no better definition of Duty than that 
same. All that is right includes itself in this of cooperating 
with the real Tendency of the World : you succeed by this 
(the World's Tendency will succeed), you are good, and in 
the right course there. Homoiousion, Homoousion, vain 
logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle 

30 itself out, and go whither and how it likes : this is the thing 
it all struggles to mean, if it would mean anything. If it 
do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. Not 
that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly worded 
or incorrectly; but the living concrete Sons of Adam do 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 69 

lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam 
devoured all these vain janghng Sects; and I think had 
right to do so. It was a Reality, direct from the great 
Heart of Nature once more. Arab idolatries, Syrian for- 
mulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flame, 
— mere dead fuel, in various senses, for this which was fire. 

It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, 
especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dic- 
tated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name Koran, 
or Reading, ^ Thing to be read.' This is the Work he and 10 
his disciples made so much of, asking all the world. Is not 
that a miracle ? The Mahometans regard their Koran with 
a reverence which few Christians pay even to their Bible. 
It is admitted everywhere as the standard of all law and 
all practice; the thing to be gone-upon in speculation and 
life : the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this 
Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be 
read. Their Judges decide by it ; all Moslem are bound to 
study it, seek in it for the light of their life. They have 
mosques where it is all read daily ; thirty relays of priests 20 
take it up in succession, get through the whole each day. 
There, for twelve-hundred years, has the voice of this Book, 
at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts 
of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors that have 
read it seventy-thousand times ! 

Very curious: if one sought for discrepancies of na- 
tional taste,' here surely were the most eminent instance 
of that ! We also can read the Koran ; our Translation of 
it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair one. I must say, it 
is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome 30 
confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long- 
windedness, entanglement ; most crude, incondite ; — in- 
supportable stupidity, in short ! Nothing but a sense of 
duty could carry any European through the Koran. We 



70 



HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable 
masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses 
of a remarkable man. It is true we have it under disad- 
vantages : the Arabs see more method in it than we. Ma- 
homet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as 
it had been written-down at first promulgation; much of 
it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pell-mell 
into a chest : and they published it, without any discover- 
able order as to time or otherwise ; — merely trying, as 

lo would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest 
chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies 
almost at the end : for the earliest portions were the short- 
est. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not 
be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind 
of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a great 
point ; much perhaps has been lost in the Translation here. 
Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any 
mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written 
in Heaven, too good for the Earth ; as a well- written book, 

20 or indeed as a hook at all ; and not a bewildered rhapsody ; 
written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book 
ever was ! So much for national discrepancies, and the 
standard of taste. 

Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how the Arabs 
might so love it. When once you get this confused coil of 
a Koran fairly off your hands, and have it behind you at a 
distance, the essential type of it begins to disclose itself; 
and in this there is a merit quite other than the literary one. 
If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other 

30 hearts ; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. 
One would say the primary character of the Koran is this 
of its genuineness, of its being a bona-fide book. Prideaux, 
I know, and others have represented it as a mere bundle of 
juggleries ; chapter after chapter got-up to excuse and varnish 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 



71 



the author's successive sins, forward his ambitions and 
quackeries : but really it is time to dismiss all that. I do 
not assert Mahomet's continual sincerity : who is continually 
sincere? But I confess I can make nothing of the critic, 
in these times, who would accuse him of deceit prepense; 
of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps at all ; — still more, 
of living in a mere element of conscious deceit, and writing 
this Koran as a forger and juggler would have done ! Every 
candid eye, I think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. 
It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul ; rude, 10 
untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, 
struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of 
breathless intensity he strives to utter himself ; the thoughts 
crowd on him pell-mell : for very multitude of things to say, 
he can get nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes 
itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, 
method, or coherence; — they are not shaped at all, these 
thoughts of his; flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and 
tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We said 
* stupid ' : yet natural stupidity is by no means the character 20 
of Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. 
The man has not studied speaking ; in the haste and pressure 
of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into 
fit speech. The panting breathless haste and vehemence 
of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salva- 
tion ; this is the mood he is in ! A headlong haste ; for very 
magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articulated 
into words. The successive utterances of a soul in that 
mood, coloured by the various vicissitudes of three-and- 
twenty years; now well uttered, now worse: this is the 30 
Koran. 

t/For we are to consider Mahomet, through these three- 
and-twenty years, as the centre of a world wholly in con- 
flict. Battles with the Koreish and Heathen, quarrels 



72 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

among his own people, backslidings of his own wild heart ; 
all this kept him in a perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest 
no more. In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild 
soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail 
any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from 
Heaven; any making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispen- 
sable for him there, would seem the inspiration of a Gabriel. 
Forger and juggler ? No, no ! This great fiery heart, 
seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts, was 

lonot a juggler's. His life was a Fact to him; this God's 
Universe an awful Fact and Reality. He has faults enough. 
The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, 
much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take 
him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry 
Impostor without eyes or heart, practising for a mess of 
pottage such blasphemous swindlery, forgery of celestial 
documents, continual high-treason against his Maker and 
Self, we will not and cannot take him. 

Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran ; 

20 what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men. It 
is, after all, the first and last merit in a book ; gives rise to 
merits of all kinds, — nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise 
to merit of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite 
masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation 
in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might 
almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the 
Book is made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement 
enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever to 
the old stories of the Prophets as they went current in the 

30 Arab memory: how Prophet after Prophet, the Prophet 
Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet Moses, Christian 
and other real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe 
and to that, warning men of their sin ; and been received 
by them even as he Mahomet was, — which is a great solace 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 



73 



to him. These things he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times ; 
again and ever again, with wearisome iteration; has never 
done repeating them. A brave Samuel Johnson, in his 
forlorn garret, might con over the Biographies of Authors 
in that way ! This is the great staple of the Koran. But 
curiously, through all this, comes ever and anon some glance 
as of the real thinker and seer. He has actually an eye for 
the world, this Mahomet: with a certain directness and 
rugged vigour, he brings home still, to our heart, the thing 
his own heart has been opened to. I make but little of his lo 
praises of Allah, which many praise; they are borrowed I 
suppose mainly from the Hebrew, at least they are far sur- 
passed there. But the eye that flashes direct into the heart 
of things, and sees the truth of them ; this is to me a highly 
interesting object. Great Nature's own gift ; which she be- 
stows on all ; but which only one in the thousand does not 
cast sorrowfully away : it is what I call sincerity of vision ; 
the test of a sincere heart. 

Mahomet can work no miracles ; he often answers im- 
patiently: I can work no miracles. I? 'I am a Public 20 
Preacher;' appointed to preach this doctrine to all crea- 
tures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old 
been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, 
says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly ^a 
sign to you,' if your eyes were open ! This Earth, God 
made it for you; ^appointed paths in it;' you can live in 
it, go to and fro on it. — The clouds in the dry country of 
Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful : Great clouds, 
he says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, 
where do they come from ! They hang there, the great 30 
black monsters; pour-down their rain-deluges ^to revive a 
dead earth,' and grass springs, and Hall leafy palm-trees 
with their date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a sign ? ' 
Your cattle too, — Allah made them ; serviceable dumb 



74 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have 
your clothing from them, very strange creatures ; they come 
ranking home at evening- time, ^and,' adds he, ^and are 
a credit to you ! ' Ships also, — he talks often about ships : 
Huge moving mountains, they spread-out their cloth wings, 
go bounding through the water there. Heaven's wind driv- 
ing them; anon they lie motionless, God has withdrawn 
the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir ! Miracles ? cries he : 
What miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves 

lo there? God made you^ ^shaped you out of a little clay.' 
Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. 
Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, ^ye have compassion 
on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and gray hairs; 
your strength fades into feebleness ; ye sink down, and again 
are not. ^ Ye have compassion on one another : ' this struck 
me much: Allah might have made you having no compassion 
on one another, — how had it been then ! This is a great 
direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of 
things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is 

20 best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untu- 
tored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man, — might 
have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of 
Hero. 

To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is 
miraculous. He sees what, as we said once before, all 
great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one 
way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid- 
looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed. Nothing ; 
is a visual and tactual Manifestation of God's power and 

30 presence, — a shadow hung-out by Him on the bosom of 
the void Infinite ; nothing more. The mountains, he says, 
these great rock-mountains, they shall dissipate themselves 
' like clouds ; ' melt into the Blue as clouds do, and not be ! 
He figures the Earth, in the Arab fashion. Sale tells us, as 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 75 

an immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the mountains 
are set on that to steady it. At the Last Day they shall 
disappear 4ike clouds;' the whole Earth shall go spinning, 
whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapour vanish 
in the Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it 
ceases to be. The universal empire of Allah, presence every- 
where of an unspeakable Power, a Splendour, and a Terror 
not to be named, as the true force, essence and reality, in 
all things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. 
What a modern talks-of by the name. Forces of Nature, 10 
Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; 
not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine 
enough, — saleable, curious, good for propelling steam- 
ships ! With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt 
to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. We 
ought not to forget it! That once well forgotten, I know 
not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, 
I think, were then a very dead thing; withered, conten- 
tious, empty ; — a thistle in late autumn. The best science, 
without this, is but as the dead timber; it is not the growing 20 
tree and forest, — which gives ever-new timber, among other 
things ! Man cannot know either, unless he can worship 
in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, 
otherwise. 

Much has been said and written about the sensuality 
of Mahomet's Religion; more than was just. The indul- 
gences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his 
appointment; he found them practised, unquestioned from 
immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail 
them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His 30 
religion is not an easy one : with rigorous fasts, lavations, 
strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and absti- 
nence from wine, it did not 'succeed by being an easy Re- 
ligion.' As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, 



76 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

could succeed by that ! It is a calumny on men to say that 
they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, 
recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or in 
the next ! In the meanest mortal there lies something 
nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his 
' honour of a soldier, ' different from drill regulations and the 
shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do 
noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's 
Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam 

lo dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest 
daydrudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly 
who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, 
martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart 
of man. Kindle the inner genial Hfe of him, you have a 
flame that burns-up all lower considerations. Not happi- 
ness, but something higher : one sees this even in the frivo- 
lous classes, with their ^ point of honour' and the like. Not 
by flattering our appetites: no, by awakening the Heroic 
that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers. 

20 Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, 
was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider 
this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base 
enjoyments, — nay on enjoyments of any kind. His house- 
hold was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread 
and water : sometimes for months there was not a fire once 
lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he 
would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, 
hard-toiling, ill-provided man ; careless of what vulgar men 
toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better 

30 in him than hunger of any sort, — or these wild Arab men, 
fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, 
in close contact with him always, would not have rever- 
enced him so ! They were wild men, bursting ever and 
anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; with- 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 77 

out right worth and manhood, no man could have com- 
manded them. They called him Prophet, you say ? Why, 
he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined 
in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling 
his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst 
of them : they must have seen what kind of a man he was, 
let him be called what you like ! No emperor with his tiaras 
was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. Dur- 
ing three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial I find 
something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself. 10 

His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a 
heart struggling-up in trembling hope, towards its Maker. 
We cannot say that his religion made him worse; it made 
him better ; good, not bad. Generous things are recorded 
of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers 
is, in his own dialect, everyway sincere, and yet equivalent 
to that of Christians, 'The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh 
away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He answered in 
like manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, 
the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the War of 20 
Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. 
Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's 
work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well 
with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over 
the body ; — the old gray-haired man melting in tears ! 
''What do I see?" said she. — "You see a friend weeping 
over his friend." — He went out for the last time into the 
mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had in- 
jured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If 
he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me three 30 
drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet or- 
dered them to be paid : "Better be in shame now," said he, 
"than at the Day of Judgment." — You remember Kadijah, 
and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the 



78 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through] 
twelve centuries, — the veritable Son of our common Mother. 
Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. 
He is a rough, self-helping son of the wilderness ; does not 
pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious 
pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: 
he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clout- 
ing; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek 
Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well 

lo enough, about himself, Hhe respect due unto thee.' In a 
life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel things could not fail ; 
but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and gen- 
erosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, 
no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of 
his heart; each called-for, there and then. Not a mealy- 
mouthed man ! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is 
in him ; he does not mince matters ! The War of Tabuc 
is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of 
them, to march on that occasion ; pleaded the heat of the 

20 weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget 
that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will be- 
come of your harvest through all Eternity ? Hot weather ? 
Yes, it was hot ; ' but Hell will be hotter ! ' Sometimes a 
rough sarcasm turns-up: He says to the unbelievers. Ye 
shall have the just measure of your deeds at that Great Day. 
This will be weighed-out to you; ye shall not have short 
weight ! — Everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye ; he 
sees it: his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by 
the greatness of it. ^Assuredly, ' he says : that word, in the 

30 Koran, is written-down sometimes as a sentence by itself : 
'Assuredly.' 

No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of 
Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity : 
he is in deadly earnest about it ! Dilettantism, hypothesis, 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 



79 



speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and 
coquetting with Truth : this is the sorest sin. The root of 
all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul 
of the man never having been open to Truth ; — living in a 
vain show.' Such a man not only utters and produces false- 
hoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral 
principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in 
quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of Ma- 
homet are truer than the truths of such a man. He is the 
insincere man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times lo 
and places; inoffensive, says nothing harsh to anybody; 
most cleanly, — just as carbonic acid is, which is death and 
poison. 

We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always 
of the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is 
always a tendency to good in them ; that they are the true 
dictates of a heart aiming towards what is just and true. 
The sublime forgiveness of Christianity, turning of the 
other cheek when the one has been smitten, is not here: 
you are to revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not 20 
overmuch, or beyond justice. On the other hand, Islam, 
hke any great Faith, and insight into the essence of man, 
is a perfect equaliser of men : the soul of one believer out- 
weighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to Islam 
too, are equal. Mahomet insists not on the propriety of 
giving alms, but on the necessity of it : he marks-down by 
law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if 
you neglect. The tenth part of a man's annual income, 
whatever that may be, is the property of the poor, of those 
that are afHicted and need help. Good all this : the natural 30 
voice of humanity, of pity and equity dwelKng in the heart 
of this wild Son of Nature speaks so. 

Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; 
in the one and the other there is enough that shocks all 



8o HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

spiritual feeling in us. But we are to recollect that the 
Arabs already had it so; that Mahomet, in whatever he 
changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst 
sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, 
not his work. In the Koran there is really very little said 
about the joys of Paradise ; they are intimated rather than 
insisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest joys even 
there shall be spiritual; the pure Presence of the Highest, 
this shall infinitely transcend all other joys. He says, 

lo^Your salutation shall be, Peace.' Salam, Have Peace! — 
the thing that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly 
here below, as the one blessing. ^Ye shall sit on seats, 
facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out 
of your hearts.' All grudges ! Ye shall love one another 
freely; for each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there 
will be Heaven enough ! 

In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahom- 
et's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, there were 
many things to be said ; which it is not -convenient to enter 

20 upon here. Two remarks only I shall make, and therewith 
leave it to your candour. The first is furnished me by Goethe ; 
it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking 
note of. In one of his Delineations, in Meister^s Travels 
it is, the hero comes-upon a Society of men with very strange 
ways, one of which was this : '^ We require," says the Master, 
'Hhat each of our people shall restrict himself in one direc- 
tion," shall go right against his desire in one matter, and 
make himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we 
allow him the greater latitude on all other sides." There 

30 seems to me a great justness in this. Enjoying things which 
are pleasant ; that is not the evil : it is the reducing of our 
moral self to slavery by them that is. Let a man assert 
withal that he is king over his habitudes ; that he could and 
would shake them off, on cause shown : this is an excellent 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 8l 

law. The Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Ma- 
homet's Religion, much in his own Life, bears in that direc- 
tion ; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral improve- 
ment on his part, then by a certain healthy manful instinct, 
which is as good. 

But there is another thing to be said about the Mahom- 
etan Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, however gross 
and material they may be, they are an emblem of an ever- 
lasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere. 
That gross sensual Paradise of his ; that horrible flaming ic 
Hell ; the great enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually 
insists on : what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude 
Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual Fact, and 
Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for us too if we do not 
all know and feel : the Infinite Nature of Duty ? That man's 
actions here are of infinite moment to him, and never die or 
end at all ; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards 
high as Heaven, downwards low as Hell, and in his three- 
score years of Time holds an Eternity fearfully and wonder- 
fully hidden: all this had burnt itself, as in flame-charac- 20 
ters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, 
it stands written there ; awful, unspeakable, ever present to 
him. With bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sin- 
cerity, half-articulating, not able to articulate, he strives 
to speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven and that Hell. 
Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first of all truths. 
It is venerable under all embodiments. What is the chief 
end of man here below? Mahomet has answered this 
question, in a way that might put some of us to shame ! 
He does not, like a Bentham, a Paley, take Right and Wrong, 30 
and calculate the profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the 
one and of the other; and summing all up by addition 
and subtraction into a net result, ask you. Whether on 
the whole the Right does not preponderate considerably? 



82 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

No ; it is not better to do the one than the other ; the one is 
to the other as hfe is to death, — as Heaven is to Hell. 
The one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left 
undone. You shall not measure them; they are incom- 
mensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other 
is life eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss ; 
reducing this God's-world to a dead brute Steam-engine, 
the infinite celestial Soul of Man to a kind of Hay-balance 
for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on : 

lo — If you ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beg- 
garlier and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this 
Universe, I will answer. It is not Mahomet. ! 

On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahom- 
et's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of 
what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be 
hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God 
Wish, the god of all rude men, — this has been enlarged 
into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of 
sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and welldoing, by 

20 valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more 
valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial 
element superadded to that. Call it not false; look not at 
the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve 
centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the 
fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all 
things, it has been a religion heartily believed. These Arabs 
believe their religion, and try to live by it ! No Christians, 
since the early ages, or only perhaps the Enghsh Puritans 
in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith as the 

30 Moslem do by theirs, — believing it wholly, fronting Time 
with it, and Eternity with it. This night the watchman on 
the streets of Cairo when he cries, ^^Who goes?" will hear 
from the passenger, along with his answer, ^^ There is no God 
but God." Allah akbar, Islam, sounds through the souls, 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 83 

and whole daily existence, of these dusky milhons. Zealous 
missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, 
brutal Idolaters ; — displacing what is worse, nothing that 
is better or good. 

To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into 
light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor 
shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the 
creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to 
them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed 
becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great ; 10 
within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on 
this hand, at Delhi on that; — glancing in valour and splen- 
dour and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long 
ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, 
life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul- 
elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the 
man Mahomet, and that one century, — is it not as if a 
spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed 
black unnoticeable sand ; but lo, the sand proves explosive 
powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, 2c 
the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven ; the 
rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too 
would flame. 



LECTURE III 

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE 
[Tuesday, 12th May 1840.] 

The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are produc- 
tions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They 
presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the 
progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There 
needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant 
oT"" scientific forms, if men in" their loving wonder are to 
fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with 
the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We 
are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less 

10 questionable, character of Poet; a character which does 
not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages ; | 
whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom 
the newest age as the oldest may produce ; — and will 
produce, always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send 
a Hero-soul ; in no age is it other than possible that he may ^ 
be shaped into a Poet. 

Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in differ- 
ent times and places, do we give to Great Men ; according 
to varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in 

20 which they have displayed themselves ! We might give 
many more names, on this same principle. I will remark 
again, however, as a fact, not unimportant to be understood, 
that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such 
distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, 
Priest, or what you will, according to the kind of world he 

84 



THE HERO AS POET 85 

finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a 
truly great man that could not be all sorts of men. The 1 
Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, -r 
would never make a stanza worth much. He could not 
sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a 
Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, 
the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher ; — in one or the other 
degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I can- 
not understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing 
heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears 10 
that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, 
poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course 
of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fun- 
damental character is that of Great Man ; that the man be 
great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Auster- 
litz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of 
poetical men withal ; the things Turenne says are full of 
sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. 
The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; 
no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at 20 
all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic 
messages, it seems, quite well : one can easily believe it ; 
they had done things a little harder than these ! Burns, 
a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mira- 
beau. Shakspeare, — one knows not what he could not - 
have made, in the supreme degree. 

True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does 
not make all great men, more than all other men, in the 
self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless ; but in- 
finitely more of circumstance; and far oftenest it is the 30 
latter only that are looked to. But it is as with common 
men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a 
vague capabihty of a man, who could be any kind of crafts- 
man; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: 



86 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. And if, 
as Addison complains, you sometimes see^a street-porter 
staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at 
hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of 
cloth and small Whitechapel needle, — it cannot be con- 
sidered that aptitude of Nature alone has been consulted 
here either ! — The Great Man also, to what shall he be 
bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become 
Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably 
lo complex controversial-calculation between the world and 
him ! He will read the world and its laws ; the world with 
its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on this 
matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most impor- 
tant fact about the world. — 

Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern no- 
tions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are 
synonymous; Vates means both Prophet and Poet: and 
indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, 
have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed 

20 they are still the same; in this most important respect 
especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the 
sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls 'the 
open secret.' ''Which is the great secret?'' asks one. — 
''The open secret," — open to all, seen by almost none! 
That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 
'the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the 
bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all 
Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, 
but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but 

30 the vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible. This 
divine mystery is in all times and in all places; veritably 
is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked ; and 
the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, 



THE HERO AS POET 87 

as the realised Thought of God, is considered a trivial, in- 
ert, commonplace matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it were a 
dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! It 
could do no good, at present, to speak much about this; 
but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live 
ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity ; 

— a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise ! 

But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, 
the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it ; 
is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to 10 
-us. That always is his message; he is to reveal that to us, 

— that sacred mystery which he more than others lives 
ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it ; — 
I might say, he has been driven to know it; without con- 
sent asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound to 
live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct 
Insight and Belief; this man too could not help being a 

y sincere man ! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, 
^ it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of 
things. A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, 20 
though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, 
first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and 
Prophet, participators in the ^ open secret,' are one. 

With respect to their distinction again : The Vates Prophet, 
we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on 
the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition ; 
the Vates Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, 

, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer 
of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But 
indeed these two provinces run into one another, and can- 30 
not be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we 
are to love : how else shall we know what it is we are to do ? 
The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, 
" Consider the lilies of the field ; they toil not, neither do they 



88 HEROES AND HE^O-WORSHIP 

spin : yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. 
^The lilies of the field,' — dressed finer than earthly princes, 
springing-up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful 
eye looking-out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty ! 
How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged 
as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty ? In this 
point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered 
several, may have meaning: ^The Beautiful,' he intimates, 

in^is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the 
' Good. ' The true Beautiful ; which however, I have said some- 
where, ^differs from the jaUe as Heaven does from Vaux- 
hall!' So much for the distinction and identity of Poet 
and Prophet. — 

In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets 
who are accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of trea- 
son to find fault with. This is noteworthy; this is right: 
yet in strictness it is only an illusion. At bottom, clearly 
I enough, there is no perfect Poet ! A vein of Poetry exists 

MO in the hearts of all men ; no man is made altogether of Poetry. 
We are all poets when we read a poem well. The ^imagina- 
tion that shudders at the Hell of Dante,' is not that the same 
faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but 
Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the 
story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did: but every one models 
some kind of story out of it ; every one embodies it better 
or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where 
there is no specific difference, as between round and square, 
all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that 

30 has so much more of the poetic element developed in him 
as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his 
neighbours. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take 
for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. 
One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, 



THE HERO AS POET 89' 

to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he 
ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary dis- 
tinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Uni- 
versal; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are 
very soon forgotten : but not the noblest Shakspeare or 

f Homer of them can be remembered forever; — a day comes 
when he too is not ! 

Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference 
between true Poetry and true Speech not poetical: what 
is the difference ? On this point many things have been 10 
written, especially by late German Critics, some of which 
are not very intelligible at first. They say, for example, 
that the Poet has an infinitude in him; communicates an 
Unendlichkeit, a certain character of ^infinitude,' to whatso- 
ever he delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on 
so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well meditated, 
some meaning will gradually be found in it. For my own 
part, I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinc- 

^ tion of Poetry being metrical, having music in it, being a 
Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say 20 
this as soon as anything else: If your delineation be au- 
thentically musical, musical not in word only, but in heart 
and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in •- 
the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, 
not. — Musical : how much lies in that ! A musical thought 

' is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost 
heart of the thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely 
the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of 
coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right 
to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, 30 
are melodious; naturally utter themselves in Song. The 
meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical 
words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of 
inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge 

--of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ! 



90 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has some- 
thing of song in it : not a parish in the world but has its 
parish-accent ; — the rhythm or tune to which the people 
there sing what they have to say ! Accent is a kind of 
chanting; all men have accent of their own, — though they 
only notice that of others. Observe too how all passionate 
language does of itself become musical, — with a finer 
music than the mere accent ; the speech of a man even in 
zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things 

loare Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of 
us, Song ; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls ! 
The primal element of us; of us, and of all things. The 
Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feehng 
they had of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of 
all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, 
therefore, we will call musical Thought . The Poet is he who 
thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power 
of intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that 
makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musi- 

20 cally ; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you 
can only reach it. 

The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, 
seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with 
the Vates Prophet ; his function, and our esteem of him for 
his function, alike slight. The Hero taken as Divinity; 
the Hero taken as Prophet ; then next the Hero taken only 
as Poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the Great 
Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? 
We take him first for a god, then for one god-inspired ; and 

30 now in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains 
from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful 
verse-maker, man of genius, or suchlike ! — It looks so ; 
but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we 
consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there 



THE HERO AS POET 



91 



is the same altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic 
Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time 
was. 

I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man liter- 
ally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme 
unattainable Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, 
are ever rising higher; not altogether that our reverence 
for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting 
lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilet- 
tantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last 10 
forever, does indeed in this the highest province of human 
things, as in all provinces, make sad work; and in our 
reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as 
it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men 
worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that 
there is any reality of great men to worship. The drear- 
iest, fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally 
despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, 
at Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery ; that is 
the show of him: yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after 20 
his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put 
together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of 
inns, gather round the Scottish rustic. Burns ; — a strange 
feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like 
this ; that, on the whole, this is the man ! In the secret 
heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though 
there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that 
this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and 
strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far 
beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do 30 
not we feel it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, 
Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us, — 
as, by God's blessing, they shall one day be ; were faith in 
the shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear 



92 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

faith in the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of 
that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new 
livelier feeling towards this Burns were it ! 

Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not 
two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? 
Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we 
will think of it, canonised so that it is impiety to meddle 
with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working 
across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such 

10 result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They 
dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none 
second to them : in the general feeling of the world, a cer- 
tain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, 
invests these two. They are canonised, though no Pope 
or Cardinals took hand in doing it ! Such, in spite of every 
perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our 
indestructible reverence for heroism. — We will look a little 
at these Two, the Poet Dante and the Poet Shakspeare: 
what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet 

20 will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. 

Many volumes have been written by way of commentary 
on Dante and his Book; yet, on the whole, with no great 
result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for 
us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrowstricken man, not 
much note was taken of him while he lived ; and the most 
of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. 
It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. 
After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we 
know of him. The Book ; — and one might add that Por- 
30 trait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, 
you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. 
To me it is a most touching face ; perhaps of all faces that 
I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, 



THE HERO AS POET 93 

with the simple laurel wound round it ; the deathless sorrow 
and pain, the known victory which is also deathless ; — 
significant of the whole history of Dante ! I think it is the 
mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality; an 
altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as 
foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection 
as of a child ; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contra- 
diction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. 
A soft ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim- 
trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! Withal 10 
it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one : the lip is curled 
in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out 
his heart, — as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, 
as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were 
greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and life- 
long unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection 
all converted into indignation : an implacable indignation ; 
slow, equable, silent, like that of a god ! The eye too, it 
looks-out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry. Why the 
world was of such a sort ? This is Dante : so he looks, this 20 
'voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings us 'his mystic un- 
fathomable song.' 

The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well 
enough with this Portrait and this Book. He was born at 
Florence, in the upper class of society, in the year 1265. 
His education was the best then going ; much school-divinity, 
Aristotelean logic, some Latin classics, — no inconsiderable 
insight into certain provinces of things: and Dante, with 
his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned 
better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear 30 
cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; this best 
fruit of education he had contrived to realise from these 
scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies close 
to him ; but, in such a time, without printed books or free 



94 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

intercourse, he could not know well what was distant : the 
small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks 
itself into singular chiaroscuro striking on what is far off. 
This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had 
gone through the usual destinies; been twice out cam- 
paigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on em- 
bassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of 
talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates 
of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice 

loPortinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, 
and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some 
distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful 
affecting account of this : and then of their being parted ; 
of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. 
She makes a great figure in Dante's Poem; seems to have 
made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem 
as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim 
Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole 
strength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was 

20 wedded; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I 
fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, 
was not altogether easy to make happy. 

We will not complain of Dante's miseries : had all gone 
right with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, 
Podesta, or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well ac- 
cepted among neighbours, — and the world had wanted one 
of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence 
would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the 
ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other 

30 listening centuries (for there will be ten of them and more) 
had no Divina Commedia to hear ! We will complain of 
nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante; 
and he, struggling like a man led towards death and cruci- 
fixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give him the choice of 



THE HERO AS POET 95 

his happiness ! He knew not, more than we do, what was 
really happy, what was really miserable. 

In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, 
or some other confused disturbances rose to such a height, 
that Dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was 
with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment; 
doomed thenceforth to a Hfe of woe and wandering. His 
property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest 
feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of 
God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated ; 10 
tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand : but 
it would not do ; bad only had become worse. There is a 
record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, 
dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. 
Burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious civic 
document. Another curious document, some considerable 
number of years later, is a letter of Dante's to the Floren- 
tine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder proposal of 
theirs, that he should return on condition of apologising 
and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern pride : 20 
''If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will 
never return, nunquam revertar,^^ 

For Dante there was now no home in this world. He 
wandered from patron to patron, from place to place ; prov- 
ing, in his own bitter words, 'How hard is the path. Come 
e duro calle.^ The wretched are not cheerful company. 
Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, 
with his moody humours, was not a man to conciliate men. 
Petrarch reports of him that being at Can della Scala's 
court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, 30 
he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood 
among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (nebulones ac 
histriones) making him heartily merry; when turning to 
Dante, he said: "Is it not strange, now, that this poor 



96 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

fool should make himself so entertaining; while you, a 
wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse 
us with at all?'' Dante answered bitterly: ^^No, not 
strange; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, Like to 
Like;^^ — given the amuser, the amusee must also be given ! 
Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms 
and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, 
it came to be evident to him that he had no longer any rest- 
ing-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly 

10 world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no living 
heart to love him now; for his sore miseries there was no 
solace here. 

The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress 
itself on him ; that awful reality over which, after all, this 
Time- world, with its Florences and banishments, only flutters 
as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt never see: but 
Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see ! 
What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life 
I altogether ? Eternity : thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, 
(aoart thou and all things bound ! The great soul of Dante, 
homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that 
awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on 
that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied or bodi- 
less, it is the one fact important for all men : — but to Dante, 
in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific 
shape ; he no more doubted of that Malebolge Pool, that it 
all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its alti guai, and 
that he himself should see it, than we doubt that we should 
see Constantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long 

30 filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and 

awe, bursts forth at length into ' mystic unfathomable song ; ' 

and this his Divine Comedy, the most remarkable of all 

modern Books, is the result. 

It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, 



THE HERO AS POET 



97 



as we can see, a proud thought for him at times, That he, 
here in exile, could do this work ; that no Florence, nor no 
man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much 
help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was 
great; the greatest a man could do. 'If thou follow thy 
star, Se tu segui tua stella,'' — so could the Hero, in his 
forsakenness, in his extreme need, still say to himself: 
'^ Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a glorious 
haven !'' The labour of writing, we find, and indeed could 
know otherwise, was great and painful for him ; he says, lo 
This Book, 'which has made me lean for many years.' Ah 
yes, it was woii^ all of it, with pain and sore toil, — not in 
sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most . p.^ 
good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with his I / 
heart's blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died 
after finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six; 
— broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his 
death-city Ravenna : Hie claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab 
oris. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century 
after; the Ravenna people would not give it. "Here am 1 20 
Dante laid, shut-out from my native shores." 

I said Dante's Poem was a Song : it is Tieck who calls 
it 'a mystic unfathomable Song;' and such is literally the 
character of it. Coleridge remarks very pertinently some- 
where, that wherever you find a sentence musically worded, 
of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something 
deep and good in the meaning too. For body and soul, ^ 
word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. I /^ 
Song : we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech ! All 
old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. 30 
I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that 
whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of 
Prose cramped into jingling lines, — to the great injury of 



/^ 



i/ 



98 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part ! 
What we want to get at is the thought the man had, if he 
had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could 
speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is 
rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of 
him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by 
'the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can 
give him right to rhyme and sing ; that we call him a Poet, 
and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers, — whose speech 

10 is Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest 
reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not 
to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme ! 
Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed ; — it 
ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it 
was aiming at. I would advise all men who can speak 
their thought, not to sing it ; to understand that, in a serious 
time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for 
singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are 
charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the 

:2o false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hol- 
low, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. 
I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divine 
Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the 
very sound of it there is a canto Jermo ; it proceeds as by 
a chant. The language, his simple terza rima, doubtless 
helped him in this. One reads along naturally with a sort 
of lilt. But I add, that it could not be otherwise ; for the 
essence and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. 
Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musical ; 

30 — go deep enough, there is music everywhere. A true in- 
ward symmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, 
reigns in it, proportionates it all: architectural; which also 
partakes of the character of music. The three kingdoms, 
Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, look-out on one another like 



THE HERO AS POET 99 

compartments of a great edifice ; a great supernatural 
world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern, solemn, awful; 
Dante's World of Souls ! It is, at bottom, the sincerest of 
all Poems ; sincerity, here too, we find to be the measure 
of worth. It came deep out of the author's heart of hearts ; 
and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. 
The people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, 
used to say, '^ Eccovi V uom M e stato aW Inferno, See, there 
is the man that was in Hell!" Ah yes, he had been in 
Hell ; — in Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle ; 10 
as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. Comme- 
dias that come-out divine are not accomplished otherwise. 
Thought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it 
not the daughter of Pain ? Born as out of the black whirl- 
wind ; — true efort, in fact, as of a captive struggling to 
free himself : that is Thought. In all ways we are * to 
become perfect through suffering.^ — But, as I say, no work 
known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has 
all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It 
had made him 'lean' for many years. Not the general 20 
whole only ; every compartment of it is worked-out, with 
intense earnestness, intp truth, into clear visuality. Each 
answers to the other ; each fits in its place, like a marble 
stone accurately hewn and polished. It is the soul of 
Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered 
forever rhythmically visible there. No light task ; a right 
intense one : but a task which is done. 

Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much that 
depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's 
genius. Dante does not come before us as a large catholic 30 
mind ; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian mind : it is 
partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of 
his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concen- 
tered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world- 



lOO HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world- 
deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were down into 
the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante. 
Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost devel- 
opment of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has a 
great power of vision ; seizes the very type of a thing ; pre- 
sents that and nothing more. You remember that first 
view he gets of the Hall of Dite : red pinnacle, redhot cone 
of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom ; — so 

lo vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever ! It is as an 
emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, 
an abrupt precision in him : Tacitus is not briefer, more 
condensed ; and then in Dante it seems a natural conden- 
sation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word ; and 
then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more 
eloquent than words. It is strange with what a sharp deci- 
sive grace he snatches the true likeness of a matter: cuts 
into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the bluster- 
ing giant, collapses at VirgiFs rebuke; it is ^as the sails 

20 sink, the mast being suddenly broken.' Or that poor 
Brunetto Latini, with the cotto aspetto, ^face baked,'' parched 
brown and lean; and the 'fiery saow' that falls on them 
there, a 'fiery snow without wind,' slow, deliberate, never- 
ending ! Or the lids of those Tombs ; square sarcophaguses, 
in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in tor- 
ment ; the lids laid open there ; they are to be shut at the 
Day of Judgment through Eternity. And how Farinata 
rises; and how Cavalcante falls — at hearing of his Son, 
and the past tense 'fue^ ! The very movements in Dante 

30 have something brief; swift, decisive, almost military. 
It is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of paint- 
ing. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent, 
passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent 
'pale rages,' speaks itself in these things. 



THE HERO AS POET lOl 

For though this of painting is one of the outermost 
developments of a man, it comes like all else from the essen- 
tial faculty of him ; it is physiognomical of the whole man. 
Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have 
found a man worth something ; mark his manner of doing 
it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he 
could not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital 
type of it, unless he had, what we may call, sympathised 
with it, — had sympathy in him to bestow on objects. He 
must have been sincere about it too; sincere and sympa-io 
thetic : a man without worth cannot give you the likeness 
of any object ; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and 
trivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not 
say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of 
discerning what an object is? Whatsoever of faculty a 
man's mind may have will come out here. Is it even of 
business, a matter to be done ? The gifted man is he who 
sees the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as sur- 
plusage : It is his faculty too, the man of businesses faculty, 
that he discern the true likeness, not the false superficial 20 
one, of the thing he has got to work in. And how much of 
morality is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'the 
eye seeing in all things what it brought with it, the faculty 
of seeing M To the mean eye all things are trivial, as ^ "^ 
certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, 
the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. 
No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any 
object. In the commonest human face there lies more than 
Raphael will take-away with him. 

Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a 30 
vividness as of fire in dark night ; taken on the wider scale, 
it is everyway noble, and the outcome of a great soul. 
Francesca and her Lover, what qualities in that ! A thing 
woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A 



I02 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very- 
heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too : della 
bella persona, che mi fu tolta; and how, even in the Pit of 
woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her ! Sad- 
dest tragedy in these alti guai. And the racking winds, 
in that aer bnmo, whirl them away again, to wail forever ! 

— Strange to think : Dante was the friend of his poor Fran- 
cesca's father ; Francesca herself may have sat upon the 
Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, 

lo yet also infinite rigour of law : it is so Nature is made ; it is 
so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry 
notion is that of his Divine Comedy s being a poor splenetic 
impotent terrestrial libel ; putting those into Hell whom he 
could not be avenged-upon on earth ! I suppose if ever 
pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it 
was in Dante's. But a man who does not know rigour can- 
not pity either. His very pity will be cowardly, egoistic, 

— sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world 
an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a 

20 trembling, longing, pitying love : like the wail of yEolean 
harps, soft, soft ; like a child's young heart ; — and then 
that stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his 
towards his Beatrice ; their meeting together in the Para- 
diso; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had 
been purified by death so long, separated from him so far : — 
one likens it to the song of angels ; it is among the purest 
utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever 
came out of a human soul. 

For the intense Dante is intense in all things ; he has got 

30 into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, 
on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other 
sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call 
him ; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as 
transcendent as his love; — as indeed, what are they but 



THE HERO AS POET 



103 



the inverse or converse of his love? 'A Dio spiacenti ed a' 
nemici sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God : ' 
lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; 
^ Non ragionam di lor, We will not speak of them, look only 
and pass.' Or think of this; ^They have not the hope to 
die, Non han speranza di morte.^ One day, it had risen 
sternly benign on the scathed heart of Dante, that he, 
wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely 
die; Hhat Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.' 
Such words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and 10 
depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world ; to 
seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and 
live with the antique Prophets there. 

I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly 
preferring the Inferno to the other two parts of the Divine 
Commedia. Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our 
general Byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feel- 
ing. The Purgatorio smd Paradiso, especially the former, 
one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. It 
is a noble thing that Purgatorio, ^Mountain of Purifica-20 
tion;' an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. 
If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, 
awful, yet in Repentance too is man purified ; Repentance 
is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante 
works it out. The tremolar delV onde, that 'trembling' of 
the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, 
dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an 
altered mood. Hope has now dawned ; never-dying Hope, 
if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure 
sojourn of daemons and reprobate is underfoot ; a soft 30 
breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the 
Throne of Mercy itself. ''Pray for me," the denizens of 
that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell my Giovanna 
to pray for me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her 



I04 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

mother loves me no more!" They toil painfully up by 
that winding steep, ^bent-down like corbels of a building/ 
some of them, — crushed-together so ' for the sin of pride ; ' 
yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have 
reached the top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy 
shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when 
one has prevailed; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, 
and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected 
repentance and got its sin and misery left behind ! I call 

lo all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. 

But indeed the Three compartments mutually support 
one another, are indispensable to one another. The Para- 
diso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming 
side of the Inferno; the Inferno without it were untrue. 
All three make-up the true Unseen World, as figured in 
the Christianity of the Middle Ages ; a thing forever 
memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. 
It was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such 
depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ; a man sent to sing 

20 it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable with what 
brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into 
the Invisible one ; and in the second or third stanza, we 
find ourselves in the World of Spirits ; and dwell there, as 
among things palpable, indubitable ! To Dante they were 
so ; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the 
threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. At bot- 
tom, the one was as ^re/^rnatural as the other. Has not 
each man a soul ? He will not only be a spirit, but is one. 
To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact ; he believes 

30 it, sees it ; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I 
say again, is the saving merit, now as always. 

Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, 
an emblematic representation of his Belief about this 
Universe : — some Critic in a future age, like those Scan- 



THE HERO AS POET I05 

dinavian ones the other day, who has ceased altogether to 
think as Dante did, may find this too all an ^Allegory,' 
perhaps an idle Allegory ! It is a sublime embodiment, 
or sublimest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as 
in huge worldwide architectural emblems, how the Chris- 
tian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements 
of this Creation, on which it all turns; that these two 
differ not by preferability of one to the other, but by incom- 
patibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent 
and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as 10 
Gehenna and the Pit of Hell ! Everlasting Justice, yet 
with Penitence, with everlasting Pity, — all Christianism, 
as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. 
Emblemed : and yet, as I urged the other day, with what 
entire truth of purpose ; how unconscious of any emblem- 
ing ! Hell, Purgatory, Paradise : these things were not 
fashioned as emblems ; was there, in our Modern European 
Mind, any thought at all of their being emblems ! Were 
they not indubitable awful facts ; the whole heart of man 
taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere 20 
confirming them? So is it always in these things. Men 
do not believe an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever 
his new thought may be, who considers this of Dante to 
have been all got-up as an Allegory, will commit one sore 
mistake ! — Paganism we recognised as a veracious expres- 
sion of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the 
Universe ; veracious, true once, and still not without worth 
for us. But mark here the difference of Paganism and 
Christianism; one great difference. Paganism emblemed 
chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, 30 
combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world ; 
Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the 
Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a 
rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men, — the 



lo6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

chief recognised virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The 
other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. 
What a progress is here, if in that one respect only ! — 

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centu- 
ries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The Divina Com- 
media is of Dante's writing ; yet in truth it belongs to ten 
Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So 
always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of 
his, with these tools, with these cunning methods, — how 

lo little of all he does is properly his work ! All past inven- 
tive men work there with him; — as indeed with all of us, 
in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages ; 
the Thought they lived by stands here, in everlasting music. 
These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the 
fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who 
had gone before him. Precious they; but also is not he 
precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been 
dumb ; not dead, yet living voiceless. 

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at 

20 once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest 
thing that Europe had hitherto realised for itself ? Chris- 
tianism, as Dante sings it, is another than Paganism in the 
rude Norse mind; another than ^Bastard Christianism ' 
half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-hundred 
years before ! — The noblest idea made real hitherto among 
men, is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the 
noblest men. In the one sense and in the other, are we 
not right glad to possess it? As I calculate, it may last 
yet for long thousands of years. For the thing that is 

30 uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs alto- 
gether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer 
is of the day, under the empire of mode ; the outer passes 
away, in swift endless changes ; the inmost is the same yes- 



THE HERO AS POET 107 

terday, today, and forever. True souls, in all generations 
of the world, who look on this Dante, will find a brother- 
hood in him ; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes 
and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity ; they will 
feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint- 
Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. 
The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most 
diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the 
heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole 
secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of 10 
sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too ; his words, like 
theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if 
it were predicted that his Poem might be the most endur- 
ing thing our Europe has yet made ; for nothing so endures 
as a truly spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, 
brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, 
are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heart-song like 
this : one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to 
men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable com- 
binations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has 20 
made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, 
creeds, bodies of opinion and practice : but it has made 
little of the class of Dante's Thought. Homer yet is, veri- 
tably present face to face with every open soul of us ; and 
Greece, where is it? Desolate for thousands of years; 
away, vanished ; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, 
the life and existence of it all gone. Like a dream ; like 
the dust of King Agamemnon ! Greece was ; Greece, except 
in the words it spoke, is not. 

The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about 30 
his *uses.' A human soul who has once got into that 
primal element of Song, and sung-forth fitly somewhat 
therefrom, has worked in the depths of our existence ; feed- 
ing through long times the liie-roots of all excellent human 



lo8 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

things whatsoever, — in a way that ^ utilities ' will not suc- 
ceed well in calculating ! We will not estimate the Sun by 
the quantity of gas-light it saves us ; Dante shall be inval- 
uable, or of no value. One remark I may make : the 
contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the 
Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, 
had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's 
Italians seem to be yet very much where they were. Shall 
we say, then, Dante's effect on the world was small in 

lo comparison ? Not so : his arena is far more restricted ; 
but also it is far nobler, clearer ; — perhaps not less but 
more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, 
in the coarse dialect adapted to such ; a dialect filled with 
inconsistencies, crudities, follies : on the great masses alone 
can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely 
blended. Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in 
all times and places. Neither does he grow obsolete, as 
the other does. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there in 
the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages 

20 kindle themselves : he is the possession of all the chosen of 
the world for uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may 
long survive Mahomet. In this way the balance may be 
made straight again. 

But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect 
on the world by what we can judge of their effect there, 
that a man and his work are measured. Effect ? Influ- 
ence? Utility? Let a man do his work; the fruit of it 
is the care of Another than he. It will grow its own fruit ; 
and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian 

30 Conquests, so that it ^ fills all Morning and Evening News- 
papers,' and all Histories, which are a kind of distilled 
Newspapers ; or not embodied so at all ; — what matters 
that ? That is not the real fruit of it ! The Arabian 
Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was something. 



THE HERO AS POET 



109 



If the great Cause of Man and Man's work in God's Earth, 
got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no mat- 
ter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters 
pockieted, and what uproar and blaring he made in this 
world, — he was but a loud-sounding inanity and futility ; 
at bottom, he was not at all. Let us honour the great em- 
pire of Silence, once more ! The boundless treasury which 
we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and present 
before men ! It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for 
each of us to do, in these loud times. 10 

^ As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to 
embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the 
Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so 
Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer 
Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, 
courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of 
thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. 
As in Homer, we may still construe Old Greece; so in 
Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our 
modern Europe was, in Faith and Practice, will still be 20 
legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shaks- 
peare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice 
or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was 
sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry 
way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the 
point of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, as 
we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with 
his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent 
to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two 
fit men : Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the 30 
world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, 
the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world- 
voice; we English had the honour of producing the other. 



no HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this 
man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete 
and self-sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire 
Squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps 
never heard of him as a Poet ! The woods and skies, the 
rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough for 
this man ! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole 
English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did 
not it too come as of its own accord ? The ^ Tree Igdrasil ' 

lo buds and withers by its own laws, — too deep for our scan- 
ning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf 
of it is there, by fixed eternal laws ; not a Sir Thomas Lucy 
but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not 
sufiiciently considered : how everything does cooperate with 
all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble 
portion of solar and stellar systems ; no thought, word or act 
of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works sooner 
or later, recognisably or irrecognisably, on all men ! It is 
all a Tree : circulation of sap and influences, mutual communi- 

20 cation of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, 
with every other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. 
The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of 
Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest 
Heaven ! — 

In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan 
Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of 
all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholi- 
cism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the 
theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life 

30 which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now 
and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital 
fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that 
Middle- Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Par- 
liament could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the noblest 



THE HERO AS POET III 

product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appear- 
ance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with CathoUcism 
or what else might be necessary, sent him forth ; taking small 
thought of Acts of ParHament. King-Henrys, Queen-Eliza- 
beths go their way ; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Par- 
liament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise 
they make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, 
on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shaks- 
peare into being ? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, open- 
ing subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jan- lo 
gling and true or false endeavoring ! This Elizabethan Era, 
and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proc- 
lamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was 
the free gift of Nature ; given altogether silently ; — re- 
ceived altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little 
account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. 
One should look at that side of matters too. 

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one some- 
times hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right 
one ; I think the best judgment not of this country only, 20 
but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion. 
That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto ; the great- 
est intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of 
himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not 
such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take 
all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness 
of depth ; placid joyous strength ; all things imaged in that 
great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathom- 
able sea ! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shak- 
speare's Dramas there is, apart from all other ^faculties' as 30 
they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that 
in Bacon's Novum Organum. That is true ; and it is not a truth 
that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if 
we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's 



112 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

dramatic materials, we could fashion such a result ! The 
built house seems all so fit, — everyway as it should be, as if 
it came there by its own law and the nature of things, — we 
forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The 
very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, 
hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any 
other man, we may call Shakspeare in this : he discerns, knows 
as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his ma- 
terials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. 

I o It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice ; it is 
deliberate illumination of the whole matter ; it is a calmly 
seeing eye ; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some 
wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, 
what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it, — is 
the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. 
Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent ; which 
unessential, fit to be suppressed ; where is the true beginning, 
the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task 
the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must 

20 understand the thing; according to the depth of his under- 
standing, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him 
so. Does Uke join itself to Hke ; does the spirit of method 
stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order ? 
Can the man say. Fiat lux. Let there be light ; and out of 
chaos make a world ? Precisely as there is light in himself, 
will he accomplish this. 

Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Por- 
trait-painting, deHneating of men and things, especially of 
men, that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man 

30 comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that 
calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he 
looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost 
heart, and generic secret : it dissolves itself as in Hght before 
him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Crea- 



THE HERO AS POET II 2 

live, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing 
the thing sufficiently ? The word that will describe the thing, 
follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. 
And is not Shakspeare's morality, his valour, candour, toler- 
ance, truthfulness ; his whole victorious strength and great- 
ness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there 
too ? Great as the world ! No twisted, poor convex-concave 
mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and con- 
cavities ; a perfectly level mirror ; — that is to say withal, if 
we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and 10 
men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this 
great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, 
an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus ; sets them all forth to us 
in their round completeness ; loving, just, the equal brother 
of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find 
in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, 
poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one 
finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe 
alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him 
too you say that he saw the object ; you may say what he 20 
himself says of Shakspeare : ^His characters are like watches 
with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the 
hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.' 
The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner harmony 
of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature 
has wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Some- 
thing she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were 
discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can 
laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some 
way or other genially relate yourself to them ; — you can, at ^o 
lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and 
others' face from them, till the hour come for practically 
exterminating and extinguishing them ! At bottom, it is the 
Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect 



114 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

enough. He will be a Poet if he have : a Poet in word ; 
or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether 
he write at all ; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will 
depend on accidents : who knows on what extremely trivial 
accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on 
his being taught to sing in his boyhood ! But the faculty 
which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, 
and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has 
a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together 

10 and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the 
gift of Nature herself ; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man 
in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say 
first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep 
stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each 
other, and name yourself a Poet ; there is no hope for you. 
If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or specula- 
tion, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used 
to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure 
he's not a dunce? '' Why, really one might ask the same thing, 

20 in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function ; and 
consider it as the one inquiry needful : Are ye sure he's not 
a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal 
person. 

For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a 
man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define 
Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, 
and think I had included all under that. What indeed are 
faculties ? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, 
things separable ; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, 

30 &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. 
Then again, we hear of a man's intellectual nature,' and of 
his ^ moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and existed 
apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such 
forms of utterance ; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, 



THE HERO AS POET I15 

if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden 
into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this 
matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We 
ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these 
divisions are at bottom but names; that man's spiritual 
nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially 
one and indivisible ; that what we call imagination, fancy, 
understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the 
same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each 
other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one ofic 
them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we 
call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another side 
of the one vital Force whereby he is and works ? All that a 
man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a 
man would fight, by the way in which he sings ; his courage, 
or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the 
opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. 
He is one; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these 
ways. 

Without hands a man might have feet, and could still 20 
walk : but, consider it, — without morality, intellect were 
impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral man could not 
know anything at all ! To know a thing, what we can call 
knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathise with it : 
that is, be virtuously related to it. If he have not the justice 
to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to 
stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he 
know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his 
knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, 
to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book 130 
what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; 
for the uses of the day merely. — But does not the very Fox 
know something of Nature ? Exactly so : it knows where 
the geese lodge ! The human Reynard, very frequent every- 



Il6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP ^ 

where in the world, what more does he know but thisand the 
Hke of this ? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the 
Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he could not even 
know where the geese were, or get at the geese ! If he spent 
his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, 
his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so 
forth ; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and 
other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no 
geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his moraUty and 

lo insight are of the same dimensions ; different faces of the same 
internal unity of vulpine life ! — These things are worth 
stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very 
baleful perversion, in this time : what limitations, modifica- 
tions they require, your own candour will supply. 

If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of 
Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more 
in Shakspeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what 
I call an unconscious intellect ; there is more virtue in it than 
he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks of him, 

20 that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as 
Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shak- 
speare's Art is not Artifice ; the noblest worth of it is not there 
by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of 
Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of 
Nature. The latest generations of men will find new mean- 
ings in Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human 
being; 'new harmonies with the infinite structure of the 
Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the 
higher powers and senses of man.' This well deserves meditat- 

30 ing. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul, 
that he get thus to be a part of herself. Such a man's works, 
whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and fore- 
thought shall accomplish, grow up withal ^^consciously, 
from the unknown deeps in him; — as the oak-tree grows 



THE HERO AS POET II7 

from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape 
themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own 
laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in 
Shakspeare Ues hid ; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to 
himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable,at 
all : like roots, like sap and forces working underground ! 
Speech is great ; but Silence is greater. 

Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I 
will not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without 
victory ; but true battle, — the first, indispensable thing. 10 
Yet I call Shakspeare greater than Dante, in that he fought 
truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own 
sorrows : those Sonnets of his will even testify expressly in 
what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for 
his life ; — as what man like him ever failed to have to do ? 
It seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that 
he sat like a bird on the bough ; and sang forth, free and off- 
hand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; 
with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from 
rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy- writing, and not fall-in 20 
with sorrows by the way ? Or, still better, how could a man 
delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many 
suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never 
suffered ? — And now, in contrast with all this, observe his 
mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter ! 
You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but only in 
laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, 
are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet he is always in measure 
here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 
'good hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from him in 30 
floods ; he heap^ all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the 
butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of 
horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. 
And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial 



Il8 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; 
never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will 
laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring 
to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter 
means sympathy; good laughter is not ^the crackling of 
thorns under the pot.' Even at stupidity and pretension 
this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. 
Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts ; and we dismiss 
them covered with explosions of laughter: but we Kke the 
lo poor fellows only the better for our laughing ; and hope they 
will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City- 
watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is 
very beautiful to me. 

We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual 
works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be 
said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays 
reviewed as Hamlet, in Wilhelm Meister, is ! A thing which 
might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a 
remark on his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, 

20 which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of 
National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew 
no English History but what he had learned from Shak- 
speare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable 
Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; 
all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it 
is, as Schlegel says, epic; — as indeed all delineation by a 
great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in 
those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful 
thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most 

30 perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. 
The description of the two hosts : the worn-out, jaded Eng- 
lish ; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall 
begin; and then that deathless valour: "Ye good yeoman. 






THE HERO AS POET 



119 



whose limbs were made in England!'' There is a noble 
Patriotism in it, — far other than the ^indifference' you some- 
times hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart 
breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business ; not 
boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that. There is a 
sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too had a right 
stroke in him, had it come to that ! 

But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we 
have no full impress of him there ; even as full as we have 
of many men. His works are so many windows, through 10 
which we see a ghmpse of the world that was in him. All 
his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, 
written under cramping circumstances; giving only here 
and there a note of the 'full utterance of the man. Passages 
there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven ; 
bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing : 
you say, ^^That is true, spoken once and forever; whereso- 
ever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will 
be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us 
feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant ; that it is, 20 
in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to 
write for the Globe Playhouse : his great soul had to crush 
itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with 
him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save under 
conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought 
before us ; but his Thought as he could translate it into the 
stone that was given, with the tools that were given. Disjecta 
membra are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man. 

Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may 
recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way; of an in- 30 
sight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in 
another strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine; 
w/^speakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: ^We are 



I20 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' That scroll in West- 
minster Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of 
the depth of any seer. But the man sang ; did not preach, 
except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest of 
Middle-Age Cathohcism. May we not call Shakspeare the 
still more melodious Priest of a true Catholicism, the ' Uni- 
versal Church ' of the Future and of all times ? No narrow 
superstition, harsh asceticism, fanatical fierceness or per- 
version : a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousand- 

lofold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; 
which let all men worship as they can ! We may say without 
offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this 
Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the 
still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, 
if we understood them, but in harmony ! — I cannot call this 
Shakspeare a ^Sceptic,' as some do; his indifference to the 
creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. 
No : neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Pa- 
triotism ; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. 

20 Such indifference' was the fruit of his greatness withal: 
his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we 
may call it such) ; these other controversies, vitally important 
to other men, were not vital to him. 

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right 
glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has 
brought us ? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind 
of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this 
Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent 
Bringer of Light ? — And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far 

30 better that this Shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man, 
was conscious of no Heavenly message ? He did not feel, like 
Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, 
that he specially .was the ^ Prophet of God : ' and was he not 
greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we 



THE HERO AS POET 121 

compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more successful. 
It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his 
supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextri- 
cably involved in error to this day ; dragging along with it 
such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a 
questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, 
that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an 
ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum ; no Speaker, 
but a Babbler ! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet 
will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this lo 
Shakspeare, this Dante, may still be young ; — while this 
Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of 
Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come ! 

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even 
with iEschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and 
universality, last like them ? He is sincere as they ; reaches 
deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. But 
as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to 
be so conscious ! Alas, poor Mahomet ; all that he was 
conscious of was a mere error ; a futility and triviality, — as 20 
indeed such ever is. The truly great in him too was the un- 
conscious : that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did 
speak-out with that great thunder- voice of his, not by words 
which he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a 
history which were great ! His Koran has become a stupid 
piece of prolix absurdity ; we do not believe, like him, that 
God wrote that ! The Gi-eat Man here too, as always, is a 
Force of Nature : whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up 
from the ^articulate deeps. 

Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose 30 
to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without 
begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind 
glances on ; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, 



122 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

was for sending to the Treadmill ! We did not account him 
a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us ; — on which point 
there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat : 
In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider 
what this Shakspeare has actually become among us. Which 
EngUshman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million 
of EngHshmen, would we not give-up rather than the Strat- 
ford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries 
that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have 

loyet done. For our honour among foreign nations, as an 
ornament to our English Household, what item is there that 
we would not surrender rather than him ? Consider now, if 
they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your 
Shakspeare, you English ; never have had any Indian Empire, 
or never have had any Shakspeare ? Really it were a grave 
question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official 
language ; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced 
to answer : Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire ; we cannot 
do without Shakspeare ! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, 

20 some day ; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever 
with us ; we cannot give-up our Shakspeare ! 

Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him 
merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. 
England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a 
small fraction of the English : in America, in New Holland, 
east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxon- 
dom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what 
is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, 
so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in 

30 brotherlike intercourse, helping one another ? This is justly 
regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all 
manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accom- 
plish : what is it that will accomplish this ? Acts of Parlia- 
ment, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is 



THE HERO AS POET 1 23 

parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it 
not fantastic, for there is much reality in it : Here, I say, is 
an English King, whom no time or chance. Parliament or 
combination of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This King 
Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over 
us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs ; 
^*;^destructible ; really more valuable in that point of view 
than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can 
fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of EngHshmen, 
a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, 10 
wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, 
English men and women are, they will say to one another : 
'^Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak 
and think by him ; we are of one blood and kind with him." 
The most common sense politician, too, if he pleases, may 
think of that. 

Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an 
articulate voice ; that it produce a man who will speak-forth 
melodiously what the heart of it means ! Italy, for example, 
poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appear- 20 
ing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the noble 
Italy is actually one: Italy produced its Dante; Italy can 
speak ! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong, with so 
many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does a great 
feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically together; 
but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is 
a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard 
of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a 
great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks 
will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice 3J> 
is still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together 
as no dumb Russia can be. — We must here end what we had 
to say of the Hero-Poet, 



LECTURE IV 

THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; 

PURITANISM 

[Friday, 15th May 1840.] 

Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. 
We have repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts 
of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material ; that given 
a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there 
is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and 
work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner ; there 
is given a Hero, — the outward shape of whom will depend 
on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The 
Priest too, as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet ; in him 

10 too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must 
name it. He presides over the worship of the people ; is the 
Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual 
Captain of the people ; as the Prophet is their spiritual King 
with many captains : he guides them heavenward, by wise 
guidance through this Earth and its work. The ideal of him 
is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen 
Heaven ; interpreting, even as the Prophet did, andin a more 
familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen 
Heaven, — the 'open secret of the Universe,' — which so few 

20 have an eye for ! He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful 
splendour; burning with mild equable radiance, as the en- 
lightener of daily life. This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. 
So in old times; so in these, and in all times. One knows 
very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude 

124 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 125 

of tolerance is needful ; very great. But a Priest who is not 
this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a 
character — of whom we had rather not speak in this place. 

Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and 
did faithfully perform that function in its common sense. 
Yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their 
historical character, rather as Reformers than Priests. There 
have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer 
times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship ; 
bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from 10 
Heaven into the daily life of their people ; leading them for- 
ward, as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were 
to go. But when this same way was a rough one, of battle, 
confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through 
that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of 
his leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfar- 
ing and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet 
faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous 
conflict, in times all violent, dismembered : a more perilous 
service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. 20 
These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as 
they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every 
true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all ? 
He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's 
visible force ; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone 
strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a 
seer J seeing through the shows of things ; a worshipper, in one 
way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, 
that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for 
much as a Reformer. 30 

Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situa- 
tions, building-up Religions, heroic Forms of human Exist- 
ence in this world, Theories of Life worthy to be sung by a 
Dante, Practices of Life by a Shakspeare, — we are now to 



126 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

see the reverse process; which also is necessary, which 
also may be carried-on in the Heroic manner. Curious 
how this should be necessary: yet necessary it is. The 
mild shining of the Poet's light has to give place to the 
fierce lightning of the Reformer: unfortunately the Re- 
former too is a personage that cannot fail in History ! The 
Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product 
and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its 
fierceness ? No wild Saint Dominies and Thebaid Eremites, 

lo there had been no melodious Dante ; rough Practical Endeav- 
our, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, 
from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay 
the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that 
his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that 
before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed. 
Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the 
way of music; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude 
creatures were by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this 
rhythmic musical way, how good were it could we get so 

20 much as into the equable way ; I mean, if peaceable Priests, 
reforming from day to day, would always suffice us ! But 
it is not so ; even this latter has not yet been realised, Alas, 
the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful 
and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never want- 
ing: the very things that were once indispensable further- 
ances become obstructions ; and need to be shaken-off, and 
left behind us, — a business often of enormous difficulty. 
It is notable enough, surely, how a Theorem or spiritual Rep- 
resentation, so we may call it, which once took-in the whole 

30 Universe, and was completely satisfactory in all parts of it 
to the highly-discursive acute intellect of Dante, one of the 
greatest in the world, — had in the course of another century 
become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; 
and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 27 

Odin's Theorem ! To Dante, human Existence, and God's 
ways with men, were all well represented by those Malebolges, 
Purgatorios; to Luther not well. How was this? Why 
could not Dante's Catholicism continue ; but Luther's Prot- 
estantism must needs follow ? Alas, nothing will continue, 

I do not make much of ^Progress of the Species,' as handled 
in these times of ours; nor do I think you would care to 
hear much about it. The talk on that subject is too often 
of the most extravagant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the 
fact itself seems certain enough ; nay we can trace-out the 10 
inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every man, 
as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer : 
he learns with the mind given him what has been ; but with 
the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises 
somewhat of his own. Absolutely without originality there 
is no man. No man whatever believes, or can believe, ex- 
actly what his grandfather believed : he enlarges somewhat, 
by fresh discovery, his view of the Universe, and consequently 
his Theorem of the Universe, — which is an infinite Universe, 
and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or 20 
Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges 
somewhat, I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his 
grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with 
some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the his- 
tory of every man; and in the history of Mankind we see 
it summed-up into great historical amounts, — revolutions, 
new epochs. Dante's Mountain of Purgatory does not stand 
4n the ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has 
once sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant in the 
other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease to be 30 
believed to be there. So with all beliefs whatsoever in this 
world, — all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that 
spring from these. 

If we add now the melancholy fact, that when BeHef 



128 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, 
injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, 
we shall see material enough for revolution. At all turns, 
a man who will do faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he 
have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage; if he cannot 
dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage 
serve, he is a poor eye-servant ; the work committed to him 
will be m^done. Every such man is a daily contributor to 
the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishon- 

lo estly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, 
parent of new misery to somebody or other. Offences 
accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then 
violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's 
sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced 
still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has 
to be torn asunder by a Luther ; Shakspeare's noble Feudal- 
ism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a 
French Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, as 
we say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder volcanically ; 

20 and there are long troublous periods before matters come to a 
settlement again. 

Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face 
of the matter, and find in all human opinions and arrange- 
ments merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, 
subject to the law of death ! At bottom, it is not so : all 
death, here too we find, is but of the body, not of the 
essence or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or 
howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. 
Odinism was Valour ; Chris tianism was Humility, a nobler 

30 kind of Valour. No thought that ever dwelt honestly as 
true in the heart of man but was an honest insight into 
God's truth on man's part, and has an essential truth in it 
which endures through all changes, an everlasting posses- 
sion for us all. And, on the other hand, what a melan- 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 29 

choly notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all 
countries and times except our own, as having spent their 
life in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandi- 
navians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true 
ultimate knowledge ! All generations of men were lost and 
wrong, only that this present little section of a generation 
might be saved and right. They all marched forward 
there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like 
the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, 
only to fill-up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we 10 
might march-over and take the place ! It is an incredible 
hypothesis. 

Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with 
fierce emphasis ; and this or the other poor individual man, 
with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead 
bodies of all men, towards sure victory : but when he, too, 
with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into 
the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said ? — 
Withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man, that 
he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon 20 
it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or the 
other way ; but it must be in some wider, wiser way than 
this. Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, sol- 
diers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven's cap- 
taincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the empire 
of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one 
another, fight not against the enemy but against ourselves, 
from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be 
good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions 
of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong 30 
hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther's 
battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are 
with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, 
soldiers of the same host. — Let us now look a little at this 



130 



HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



Luther's fighting ; what kind of battle it was, and how he 
comported himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual 
Heroes ; a Prophet to his country and time. 

As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry 
will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet's charac- 
teristics, which indeed belongs to all Prophets, is unlimited 
implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the grand theme of 
Prophets : Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the 
Divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with, but have to 

lo denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reproba- 
tion ; it is the chief of all the sins they see done under the 
sun. This is worth noting. We will not enter here into 
the theological question about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon, a 
thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of God ; 
and perhaps one may question whether any the most be- 
nighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol. I 
fancy, he did not think that the poor image his own hands 
had made was God ; but that God was emblemed by it, that 
God was in it some way or other. And now in this sense, 

20 one may ask. Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by 
Symbols, by eidola, or things seen? Whether seen, ren- 
dered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye ; or 
visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the 
intellect : this makes a superficial, but no substantial dif- 
ference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; 
an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of 
Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and 
worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible 
for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions 

30 that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, 
things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Sym- 
bols, by Idols : — we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, 
and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 131 

Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil must lie 
in it, or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so 
reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It 
seems to me as if, in the worship of those poor wooden sym- 
bols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the Prophet, and 
filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was 
not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and 
came out of him in words to others, as the thing. The 
rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah 
Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that 10 
worshipped nothing at all ! Nay there was a kind of last- 
ing merit in that poor act of his ; analogous to what is still 
meritorious in Poets: recognition of a certain endless 
divine beauty and significance in stars and all natural 
objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so merci- 
lessly condemn him ? The poorest mortal worshipping his 
Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of 
pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will ; but cannot 
surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart be honestly 
full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow mind illumi- 20 
nated thereby ; in one word, let him entirely believe in his 
Fetish, — it will then be, I should say, if not well with him, 
yet as well as it can readily be made to be, and you will 
leave him alone, unmolested there. 

But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, 
in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind is any longer 
honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the 
Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to 
be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt 
that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is insincere 30 
Idolatry. Doubt has eaten-out the heart of it : a human 
soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Cove- 
nant, which it half-feels now to have become a Phantasm. 
This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls are no longer 



132 



HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



filled with their Fetish ; but only pretend to be filled, and 
would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. ^^ You 
do not believe/' said Coleridge; ^^you only believe that 
you believe.'' It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship 
and Symbolism ; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. 
It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of 
Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral act 
can be done by a human creature ; for it is the beginning 
of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility hence- 

lo forth of any morality whatsoever : the innermost moral 
soul is paralysed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep ! 
Men are no longer sincere men. I do not wonder that the 
earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with 
inextinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, are 
at death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is Cant, and even what 
one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant : that is worth 
thinking of ! Every sort of Worship ends with this phasis. 
I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less 
than any other Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, 

20 made of timber and bees-wax, were not more hateful to 
Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons of Sin, made of sheepskin 
and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero, 
in every time, in every place and situation, that he come 
back to reality ; that he stand upon things, and not shows 
of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articu- 
lately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities 
of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regu- 
lar, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be 
intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is 

30 the work of a Prophet : the prophet-work of that sixteenth 
century. The first stroke of honest demolition to an 
ancient thing grown false and idolatrous ; preparatory afar 
off to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically 
divine ! — 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 



133 



At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were 
entirely destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and 
represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or 
social, for mankind. One often hears it said that Protes- 
tantism introduced a new era, radically different from any 
the world had ever seen before: the era of ^private judg- 
ment,' as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, 
every man became his own Pope ; and learnt, among other 
things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero- 
captain, any more ! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all 10 
hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an 
impossibility ? So we hear it said. — Now I need not deny 
that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereign- 
ties. Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that Eng- 
lish Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was 
the second act of it; that the enormous French Revo- 
lution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties 
earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or 
made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root 
from which our whole subsequent European History 20 
branches out. For the spiritual will always body itself 
forth in the temporal history of men ; the spiritual is the 
beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry 
is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and 
so forth ; instead of Kings j Ballot-boxes and Electoral suf- 
frages : it seems made out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal 
obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things 
spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should 
despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest 
convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true 30 
sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible 
but an anarchy; the hatefulest of things. But I find 
Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have pro- 
duced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and 



134 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

order. I find it to be a revolt against false sovereigns ; the 
painful but indispensable first preparative for true sovereigns 
getting place among us ! This is worth explaining a little. 
Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of 
^private judgment' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the 
world, but only new at that epoch of the world. There is 
nothing generically new or peculiar in the Reformation ; it 
was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition to False- 
hood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and 

lo genuine Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private 
judgment, if we will consider it, must at all times have 
existed in the world. Dante had not put-out his eyes, or 
tied shackles on himself ; he was at home in that Catholi- 
cism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, — if many a poor Hogs- 
traten, Tetzel and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. 
Liberty of judgment ? No iron chain, or outward force of 
any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe 
or to disbelieve : it is his own indefeasible light, that judg- 
ment of his ; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace 

20 of God alone ! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, preach- 
ing sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by 
some kind of conviction, have abdicated his right to be con- 
vinced. His ^private judgment' indicated that, as the 
advisablest step he could take. The right of private judg- 
ment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men subsist. 
A true man believes with his whole judgment, with all the 
illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always 
so believed. A false man, only struggling to ^believe that 
he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way. 

30 Protestantism said to this latter. Woe ! and to the former, 
Well done ! At bottom, it was no new saying ; it was a 
return to all old sayings that ever had been said. Be gen- 
uine, be sincere : that was, once more, the meaning of it. 
Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 135 

whole mind, — he, and all true Followers of Odinism. 
They, by their private judgment, had ^judged' — so. 

And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private 
judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means neces- 
sarily end in selfish independence, isolation; but rather 
ends necessarily in the opposite of that. It is not honest 
inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, 
half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting 
against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all 
men that believe in truth. There is no communion pos-io 
sible among men who believe only in hearsays. The heart 
of each is lying dead ; has no power of sympathy even with 
things J — or he would believe them and not hearsays. No 
sympathy even with things ; how much less with his fellow- 
men ! He cannot unite with men ; he is an anarchic man. 
Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible ; — and 
there, in the longrun, it is as good as certain. 

For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, 
or rather altogether lost sight of, in this controversy : 
That it is not necessary a man should himself have discov- 20 
ered the truth he is to believe in, and never so sincerely to 
believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always sincere, as 
the first condition of him. But a man need not be great 
in order to be sincere ; that is not the necessity of Nature 
and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate 
epochs of Time. A man can believe, and make his own, 
in the most genuine way, what he has received from an- 
other ; — and with boundless gratitude to that other ! The 
merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The 
believing man is the original man ; whatsoever he believes, 30 
he believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of 
Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this 
sense ; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole 
ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original ; all men in 



136 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

them, or the most of men in them, sincere. These are the 
great and fruitful ages : every worker, in all spheres, is a 
worker not on semblance* but on substance ; every work 
issues in a result : the general sum of such work is great ; 
for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal ; all of it 
is additive, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true 
kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the 
poor Earth can produce blessedness for men. 

Hero-worship ? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, 

10 original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in 
the world from indisposing him to reverence and believe 
other men's truth ! It only disposes, necessitates and in- 
vincibly compels him to Ji^believe other men's dead for- 
mulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with 
his eyes open, and because his eyes are open : does he 
need to shut them before he can love his Teacher of truth ? 
He alone can love, with a right gratitude and genuine loy- 
alty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him out 
of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and 

20 Serpent-queller ; worthy of all reverence ! The black mon- 
ster. Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate 
by his valour ; it was he that conquered the world for us ! 
— See, accordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as 
a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, being verily such ? Napo- 
leon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became 
a King. Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty 
and Sovereignty are everlasting in the world : — and there 
is this in them, that they are grounded not on garnitures 
and semblances, but on realities and sincerities. Not by 

30 shutting your eyes, your ^private judgment;' no, but by 
opening them, and by having something to see ! Luther's 
message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and 
Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new 
genuine ones. 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 137 

All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, 
Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a 
temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though 
likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for 
us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are 
past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. 
In all ways, it behoved men to quit simulacra and return 
to fact; cost what it might, that did behove to be done. 
With spurious Popes, and Believers having no private 
judgment, — quacks pretending to command over dupes, — 10 
what can you do ? Misery and mischief only. You can- 
not make an association out of insincere men ; you cannot 
build an edifice except by plummet and level, — at right- 
angles to one another ! In all this wild revolutionary work, 
from Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result 
preparing itself : not abolition of Hero-worship, but rather 
what I would call a whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean 
sincere maUj why may not every one of us be a Hero ? A 
world all sincere, a believing world : fhe like has been ; the 
like will again be, — cannot help being. That were the 20 
right sort of Worshippers for Heroes : never could the 
truly Better be so reverenced as where all were True and 
Good ! — But we must hasten to Luther and his Life. 

Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came 
into the world there on the loth of November 1483. It 
was an accident that gave this honour to Eisleben. His 
parents, poor mine-labourers in a village of that region, 
named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in 
the tumult of this scene the Frau Luther was taken with 
travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy 30 
she bore was named Martin Luther. Strange enough to 
reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with 
her husband to make her small merchandisings ; perhaps 



138 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the 
small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household ; 
in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely 
unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and 
his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and 
Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once 
more, a Mighty Man ; whose light was to flame as the bea- 
con over long centuries and epochs of the world ; the whole 
world and its history was waiting for this man. It is 

10 strange, it is great. It leads us back to another Birth- 
hour, in a still meaner environment. Eighteen Hundred 
years ago, — of which it is fit that we say nothing, that 
we think only in silence ; for what words are there ! The 
Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever 
here ! — 

I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this 
Earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the 
Providence presiding over him and us and all things, that 
he was born poor, and brought-up poor, one of the poorest 

20 of men. He had to beg, as the school-children in those 
times did ; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. 
Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's compan- 
ion; no man nor no thing would put-on a false face to 
flatter Martin Luther. Among things, not among the 
shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, 
yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all 
faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his 
task to get acquainted with realities, and keep acquainted 
with them, at whatever cost : his task was to bring the 

30 whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with 
semblance ! A youth nursed-up in wintry whirlwinds, in 
desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step-forth at 
last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as 
a god : a Christian Odin, — a right Thor once more, with 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 139 

his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jotuns 
and Giant-monsters ! 

Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, 
was that death of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the 
gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled-up through boyhood, 
better and worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, 
the largest intellect, eager to learn : his father judging 
doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set 
him upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise; 
Luther, with little will in it either way, had consented : he 10 
was now nineteen years of age. Alexis and he had been 
to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt ; were got back 
again near Erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on ; the bolt 
struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet. What is this 
Life of ours ? — gone in a minute, burnt-up like a scroll, 
into the blank Eternity ! What are all earthly preferments, 
Chancellorships, Kingships ? They lie shrunk together — 
there ! The Earth has opened on them ; in a moment 
they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, 
determined to devote himself to God and God's service 20 
alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father and 
others, he became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at 
Erfurt. 

This was probably the first light-point in the history of 
Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself ; 
but, for the present, it was still as one light-point in an ele- 
ment all of darkness. He says he was a pious monk, ich 
bin einfrommer Monch gewesen; faithfully, painfully strug- 
gling to work-out the truth of this high act of his ; but it 
was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had 30 
rather, as it were, increased into infinitude. The drudger- 
ies he had to do, as novice in his Convent, all sorts of 
slave-work, were not his grievance : the deep earnest soul 
of the man had fallen into all manner of black scruples. 



I40 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

dubitations ; he believed himself likely to die soon, and far 
worse than die. One hears with a new interest for poor 
Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the un- 
speakable misery ; fancied that he was doomed to eternal 
reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the 
man ? What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven ! 
He that had known only misery, and mean slavery : the 
news was too blessed to be credible. It could not become 
clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass- 

lowork, a man's soul could be saved. He fell into the 
blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on 
the verge of bottomless Despair. 

It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of 
an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library 
about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It 
taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. 
A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. 
Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing 
masses, but by the infinite grace of God : a more credible 

20 hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the 
rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had 
brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the 
Word of the Highest must be prized by such a mian. He 
determined to hold by that ; as through life and to death 
he firmly did. 

This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final 
triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion; for 
himself the most important of all epochs. That he should 
now grow daily in peace and clearness; that, unfolding 

30 now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he 
should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, 
and be found more and more useful in all honest business 
of life, is a natural result. He was sent on missions by his 
Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity fit to do 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 141 

their business well : the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, 
named the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his 
eye on him as a valuable person ; made him Professor in 
his new University of Wittenberg, Preacher too at Witten- 
berg ; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this 
Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining 
more and more esteem with all good men. 

It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome ; 
being sent thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. 
Pope Julius the Second, and what was going-on at Rome, 10 
must have filled the mind of Luther with amazement. 
He had come as to the Sacred City, throne; of God's High- 
priest on Earth ; and he found it — what we know ! Many 
thoughts it must have given the man ; many which we 
have no record of, which perhaps he did not himself know 
how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false priests, 
clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other ves- 
ture, is false : but what is it to Luther ? A mean man he, 
how shall he reform a world? That was far from his 
thoughts. A humble, solitary man, why should he at all 20 
meddle with the world? It was the task of quite higher 
men than he. His business was to guide his own footsteps 
wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure 
duty in it well ; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is 
in God's hand, not in his. 

It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, 
had Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to 
go on in its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart 
his little path, and force him to assault it ! Conceivable 
enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace 30 
about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on 
high, to deal with them ! A modest quiet man ; not prompt 
he to attack irreverently persons in authority. His clear 
task, as I say, was to do his own duty ; to walk wisely in 



142 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul 
alive. But the Roman Highpriesthood did come athwart 
him : afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived 
in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to ex- 
tremity; was struck-at, struck again, and so it came to 
wager of battle between them ! This is worth attending to 
in Luther's history. Perhaps no man of so humble, peace- 
able a disposition ever filled the world with contention. 
We cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet 

lo diligence in the shade ; that it was against his will he ever 
became a notoriety. Notoriety : what would that do for 
him? The goal of his march through. this world was the 
Infinite Heaven ; an indubitable goal for him : in a few 
years, he should either have attained that, or lost it for- 
ever ! We will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrow- 
fulest of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper 
grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, 
that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the 
Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who 

20 maintain it, if indeed any such exist now : Get first into 
the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible 
to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, otherwise 
than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with 
you. 

The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of 
trade, by Leo Tenth, — who merely wanted to raise a 
little money, and for the rest seems to have been a Pagan 
rather than a Christian, so far as he was anything, — 
arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade 

30 there. Luther's flock bought Indulgences ; in the confes- 
sional of his Church, people pleaded to him that they had 
already got their sins pardoned. Luther, if he would not 
be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and 
coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 143 

was his own and no other man's, had to step-forth against 
Indulgences, and declare aloud that they were a futility and 
sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned 
by them. It was the beginning of the whole Reformation. 
We know how it went ; forward from this first public chal- 
lenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October 1517, through 
remonstrance and argument ; — spreading ever wider, rising 
ever higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped 
all the world. Luther's heart's-desire was to have this 
grief and other griefs amended; his thought was still far 10 
other than that of introducing separation in the Church, 
or revolting against the Pope, Father of Christendom. — 
The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this Monk and 
his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the 
noise of him : in a space of some three years, having tried 
various softer methods, he thought good to end it by fire. 
He dooms the Monk's writings to be burnt by the hang- 
man, and his body to be sent bound to Rome, — probably 
for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended with 
Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, 20 
fire. Poor Huss : he came to that Constance Council, 
with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts ; an earnest, 
not rebellious kind of man : they laid him instantly in a 
stone dungeon Hhree-feet wide, six-feet high, seven-feet 
long ; ' burnt the true voice of him out of this world ; choked 
it in smoke and fire. That was not well done ! 

I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting 
against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree 
of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart 
then living in this world. The bravest, if also one of the 30 
humblest, peaceablest ; it was now kindled. These words 
of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as 
human inability would allow, to promote God's truth on 
Earth, and save men's souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, 



144 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

answer them by the hangman and fire ? You will burn me 
and them, for answer to the God's-message they strove to 
bring you ? You are not God's vicegerent ; you are another's 
than his, I think ! I take your Bull, as an emparchmented 
Lie, and burn it. You will do what you see good next : this 
is what I do. — It was on the loth of December 1520, three 
years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, ^with 
a great concourse of people,' took this indignant step of burn- 
ing the Pope's fire-decree 'at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.' 

10 Wittenberg looked on ' with shoutings ; ' the whole world was 
looking on. The Pope should not have provoked that 
' shout ' ! It was the shout of the awakening of nations. The 
quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at length 
got more than it could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism, 
and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long 
enough: and here once more was a man found who durst 
tell all men that God's-world stood not on semblances but 
on realities ; that life was a truth, and not a lie ! 

At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther 

20 as a Prophet Idol-breaker ; a bringer-back of men to reahty. 
It is the function of great men and teachers. Mahomet said, 
These idols of yours are wood ; you put wax and oil on them, 
the flies stick on them : they are not God, I tell you, they are 
black wood ! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of yours 
that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with 
ink. It is nothing else ; it, and so much like it, is nothing 
else. God alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual 
Fatherhood of God's Church, is that a vain semblance, of 
cloth and parchment ? It is an awful fact. God's Church is 

30 not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I 
stand on this, since you drive me to it. Standing on this, 
I a poor German Monk am stronger than you all. I stand 
solitary, friendless, but on God's Truth ; you with your tiaras, 
triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 145 

spiritual and temporal, stand on the DeviFs Lie, and are not 
so strong ! — 

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 
17th of April 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene 
in Modern European History; the point, indeed, from 
which the whole subsequent history of civilisation takes its 
rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come 
to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the 
Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and 
temporal, are assembled there : Luther is to appear and ic 
answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The 
world's pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, 
stands-up for God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans 
Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised 
him not to go ; he would not be advised. A large company 
of friends rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest 
warnings ; he answered, " Were there as many Devils in Worms 
as there are roof -tiles, I would on." The people, on the 
morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the 
windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in 2c 
solemn words, not to recant : "Whosoever denieth me before 
men !" they cried to him, — as in a kind of solemn petition 
and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the 
petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, 
paralysed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted 
Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: "Free 
us ; it rests with thee ; desert us not !" 

Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, dis- 
tinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; 
submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not 30 
submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were 
partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to 
what was his own, human infirmity entered into it ; unguarded 
anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a bless- 



146 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



^ 



ing for him could he aboHsh altogether. But as to what stood 
on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. 
How could he? ^'Confute me/' he concluded, ^^by proofs 
of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments : I cannot recant 
otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught 
against conscience. Here stand I ; I can do no other : God 
assist me !'' — It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the 
Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and 
its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries ; 
10 French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at 
present: the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that 
moment done other, it had all been otherwise ! The Euro- 
pean World was asking him : Am I to sink ever lower into 
falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; 
or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, 
and be cured and live ? — 

Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this 
Reformation ; which last down to our day, and are yet far 
from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made 

20 about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but after 
all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them ? It 
seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all 
this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King 
Augeas's stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted 
was considerable all around : but I think it was not Her- 
cules's blame ; it was some other's blame ! The Reformation 
might bring what results it liked when it came, but the 
Reformation simply could not help coming. To all Popes 
and Popes' advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, 

30 the answer of the world is : Once for all, your Popehood has 
become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you 
say it is, we cannot believe it ; the light of our whole mind, 
given us to walk-by from Heaven above, finds it henceforth 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 147 

a thing unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try 
to believe it, — we dare not ! The thing is untrue; we were 
traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend 
to think it true. Away with it ; let whatsoever likes come in 
the place of it : with it we can have no farther trade ! — 
Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible for wars; 
the false Simulacra that forced him to protest, they are 
responsible. Luther did what every man that God has raade 
has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do : 
answered a Falsehood when it questioned him. Dost thou 10 
believe me ? — No ! — At what cost soever, without counting 
of costs, this thing behoved to be done. Union, organisation 
spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or 
Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for 
the world ; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Sem- 
blance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to 
stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and 
ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything 
to do. Peace ? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome 
grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead 20 
oue ! 

And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of 
the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was 
true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days it needed no sophistry, 
self-blinding or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. 
It was good then ; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless 
good. The cry of 'No Popery' is foolish enough in these 
days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, build- 
ing new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest 
ever started. Very curious : to count-up a few Popish chap- 30 
els, Hsten to a few Protestant logic-choppings, — to much 
dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, 
and say: See, Protestantism is dead; Popeism is more alive 
than it, will be alive after it ! — Drowsy inanities, not a few, 



148 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

that call themselves Protestant are dead; but Protestantism 
has not died yet, that I hear of ! Protestantism, if we will 
look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; 
German Literature and the French Revolution ; rather con- 
siderable signs of life ! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive 
but Protestantism ? The life of most else that one meets is 
a galvanic one merely, — not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of 
life! 

Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to 

10 all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than 
Paganism can, — which also still lingers in some countries. 
But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the 
sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on 
the beach ; for minutes you cannot tell how it is going ; 
look in half an hour where it is, — look in half a century 
where your Popehood is ! Alas, would there were no greater 
danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope's revival ! Thor 
may as soon try to revive. — And withal this oscillation has a 
meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, 

20 as Thor has done, for some time yet ; nor ought it. We may 
say, the Old never dies till this happen. Till all the soul of 
good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical 
New. While a good work remains capable of being done by 
the Romish form ; or, what is inclusive of all, while a pious 
life remains capable of being led by it, just so long, if we 
consider, will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about 
as a Hving witness of it. So long it will obtrude itself on the 
eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have appro- 
priated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not 

30 till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts 
here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can. — 

Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars 
and bloodshed, th^ noticeable fact that none of them began 



THE HERO AS PRIEST I49 

SO long as he continued living. The controversy did not 
get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it is proof 
of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do 
we find a man that has stirred-up some vast commotion, 
who does not himself perish, swept-away in it ! Such is 
the usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a 
good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution ; all Protes- 
tants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him 
for guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued firm at 
the centre of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty : 10 
he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true 
heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously 
on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may rally 
round him there. He will not continue leader of men other- 
wise. Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all 
sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation, among others, 
are very notable in these circumstances. 

Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he 
distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unes- 
sential may go very much as it will. A complaint comes to 20 
him that such and such a Reformed Preacher 'will not preach 
without a cassock.' Well, answers Luther, what harm will a 
cassock do the man ? 'Let him have a cassock to preach in ; 
let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them ! ' His 
conduct in the matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; 
of the Anabaptists; of the Peasants' War, shows a noble 
strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure 
prompt insight he discriminates what is what : a strong just 
man, he speaks-forth what is the wise course, and all men 
follow him in that. Luther's Written Works give similar 30 
testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations is now 
grown obsolete for us ; but one still reads them with a sin- 
gular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction 
is still legible enough ; Luther's merit in literary history is of 



I50 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

the greatest ; his dialect became the language of all writing. 
They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos 
of his ; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. 
But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will 
say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, 
homeliness, simplicity ; a rugged sterHng sense and strength. 
He flashes-out illumination from him ; his smiting idiomatic 
phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. 
Good humour too, nay tender affection, nobleness, and depth : 

lo this man could have been a Poet too ! He had to work an 
Epic Poem, not write one. I call him a great Thinker; as 
indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that. 

Richter says of Luther's words, 'his words are half -battles.' 
They may be called so. The essential quality of him was, that 
he could fight and conquer ; that he was a right piece of hu- 
man Valour. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be 
called braver, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teu- 
tonic Kindred, whose character is valour. His defiance of 
the ' Devils ' in Worms was not a mere boast, as the Kke might 

20 be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there were 
Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. 
Many times, in his writings, this turns-up ; and a most small 
sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the room of the 
Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show 
you a black spot on the wall ; the strange memorial of one of 
these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; 
he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness, absti- 
nence from food ; there rose before him some hideous inde- 
finable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his 

30 work: Luther started-up with fiend-defiance; flung his 
inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared ! The spot 
still remains there; a curious monument of several things. 
Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we are 
to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense : but the 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 151 

man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell 
itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing 
he will quail before exists not on this Earth or under it. — 
Fearless enough! ^The Devil is aware,' writes he on one 
occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I 
have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,' 
of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, 'Duke George is not equal 
to one Devil,' — far short of a Devil! 'If I had business 
at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke- 
Georges for nine day running.' What a reservoir of Dukes 10 
to ride into ! — 

At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this 
man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obsti- 
nacy and savagery, as many do. Far from that. There 
may be an absence of fear which arises from the absence of 
thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid 
fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! 
With Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be 
more unjust than this of mere ferocious violence brought 
against him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, 20 
as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a 
stronger foe — flies : the tiger is not what we call valiant, 
only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching than 
those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a 
mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, 
unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utter- 
ance ; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, 
was all that downpressed mood of despair and reprobation, 
which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent 
thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine? It is 30 
the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fell into. 
Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak 
man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief 
distinction of him. It is a noble valour which is roused in a 



152 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

heart like this, once stirred-up into defiance, all kindled into 
a heavenly blaze. 

In Luther's Table-Talk, a posthumous Book of anecdotes 
and sayings collected by his friends, the most interesting 
now of all the Books proceeding from him, we have many 
beautiful unconscious displays of the man, and what sort of 
nature he had. His behaviour at the deathbed of his little 
Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most 
affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene 

lo should die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live ; — 
follows, in awestruck thought, the flight of her little soul 
through those unknown realms. Awestruck; most heart- 
felt, we can see ; and sincere, — for after all dogmatic creeds 
and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can 
know : His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills ; 
for Luther too that is all ; Islam is all. 

Once, he looks-out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle 
of Coburg, in the middle of the night : The great vault of 
Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it, — 

20 dumb, gaunt, huge : — who supports all that ? "None ever 
saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports 
it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; 
and trust, where we cannot see. — Returning home from 
Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest- 
fields; How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair 
taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there, 
— the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it 
once again ; the bread of man ! — In the garden at Witten- 
berg one evening at sunset, a little bird has perched for the 

30 night: That Httle bird, says Luther, above it are the stars 
and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little 
wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: the 
Maker of it has given it too a home ! Neither are mirth- 
ful turns wanting : there is a great free human heart in this 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 53 

man. The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, 
idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there 
with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be a great 
brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is not this, as it 
were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a 
wild unutterability he spoke-forth from him in the tones of 
his flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. Death- 
defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other ; 
I could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; 
between these two all great things had room. 10 

Luther^s face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach's 
best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face ; 
with its huge crag-like brows and bones, the emblem of 
rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face. Yet in 
the eyes especially there is a wild silent sorrow ; an unnam- 
able melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections ; 
giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter 
was in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. 
Tears also were appointed him; tears and hard toil. The 
basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, 20 
after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily 
weary of living; he considers that God alone can and will 
regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the 
Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one 
thing : that God would release him from his labour, and let 
him depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man 
who cite this in discredit of him ! — I will call this Luther a 
true Great Man ; great in intellect, in courage, affection and 
integrity ; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, 
not as a hewn obelisk ; but as an Alpine mountain, — so 30 
simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be great at 
all ; there for quite another purpose than being great ! Ah 
yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the 
Heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful 



154 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; 
once more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these 
centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to 
Heaven. 

The most interesting phasis which the Reformation any- 
where assumes, especially for us English, is that of Puri- 
tanism. In Luther's own country. Protestantism soon 
dwindled into a rather barren affair : not a religion or faith, 
but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper 

lo seat of it not the heart ; the essence of it sceptical contention: 
which indeed has jangled more and more, down to Voltaire- 
ism itself, — through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions on- 
ward to French-Revolution ones ! But in our Island there 
arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a 
Presbyterian ism and National Church among the Scotch; 
which came forth as a real business of the heart; and has 
produced in the world very notable fruit. In some senses, 
one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever 
got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication 

20 with Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We 
must spare a few words for Knox ; himself a brave and remark- 
able man; but still more important as Chief Priest and 
Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith that 
became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver Cromwell's. 
History will have something to say about this, for some time 
to come ! 

We may censure Puritanism as we please ; and no one of 
us, I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective 
thing. But we, and all men, may understand that it was a 

30 genuine thing ; for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, 
and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of- 
battle in this world; that strength, well understood, is the 
measure of all worth. Give a thing time ; if it can succeed, 
it is a right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 55 

and at that little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two 
hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland ! Were 
we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem 
here ; one of Nature's own Poems, such as she writes in broad 
facts over great continents. For it was properly the begin- 
ning of America: there were straggling settlers in America 
before, some material as of a body was there ; but the soul 
of it was first this. These poor men, driven-out of their own 
country, not able well to live in Holland, determine on settling 
in the New World. Black untamed forests are there, and 10 
wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Starchamber 
hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, 
if they tilled honestly ; the everlasting heaven would stretch, 
there too, overhead ; they should be left in peace, to prepare 
for Eternity by living well in this world of Time; worship- 
ping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. 
They clubbed their small means together ; hired a ship, the 
little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail. 

In NeaFs History of the Puritans ^ is an account of the cere- 
mony of their departure : solemnity, we might call it rather, 20 
for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down 
with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were 
to leave behind ; all joined in solemn prayer, That God would 
have pity on His poor children, and go with them into that 
waste wilderness, for He also had made that. He was there 
also as well as here. — Hah ! These men, I think, had a 
work ! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong 
one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despic- 
able, laughable then ; but nobody can manage to laugh at it 
now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews ; it has fire- 30 
arms, war-navies ; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength 
in its right arm ; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove moun- 
tains ; — it is one of the strongest things under this sun at 
present ! 

1 Neal (London, 1755), i. 490. 



156 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but 
one epoch : we may say, it contains nothing of world-inter- 
est at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren coun- 
try, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a 
people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little 
better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce 
barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with 
each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor 
drudges; but obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at 

10 this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way 
of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on 
gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular 
significance! ^Bravery' enough, I doubt not; fierce fight- 
ing in abundance : but not braver or fiercer than that of their 
old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors ; whose exploits we have 
not found worth dwelling on ! It is a country as yet without 
a soul : nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, 
semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal 
life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward 

20 material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, 
like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable 
from Earth ; — whereby the meanest man becomes not a 
Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a 
veritable Hero, if he prove a true man ! 

Well; this is what I mean by a whole ^nation of heroes '; 
a believing nation. There needs not a great soul to make a 
hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to 
its origin ; that will be a great soul ! The like has been 
seen, we find. The like will be again seen, under wider 

30 forms than the Presbyterian : there can be no lasting good 
done till then. — Impossible ! say some. Possible ? Has 
it not been, in this world as a practised fact? Did Hero- 
worship fail in Knox's case? Or are we made of other 
clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 57 

some new property to the soul of man ? God made the soul 
of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a 
Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with 
the fatal work and fruit of such ! 

But to return : This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, 
we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was 
not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and 
cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, 
cheap at any price; — as life is. The people began to live: 
they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs 10 
soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; 
James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: 
I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core 
of every one of these persons and phenomena ; I find that 
without the Reformation they would not have been. Or 
what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became 
that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High 
Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and 
struggle over all these realms ; — there came out, after 
fifty-years struggling, what we all call the ^Glorious Revolu- 20 
tion,' a Habeas-Corpus Act, Free Parliaments, and much 
else ! — Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men 
in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the 
ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, 
that the rear may pass-over them dry-shod, and gain the 
honour? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, 
poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, 
in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, 
greatly censured, bemired, — before a beautiful Revolution of 
Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk- 30 
stockings, with universal three-times-three ! 

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now 
after three-hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit 
before the world ; intrinsically for having been, in such way 



158 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen ! 
Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched 
into the corner, like so many others ; Scotland had not been 
delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the 
one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the 
world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would for- 
give him for having been worth to it any million ^ unblamable ' 
Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast 
to the battle ; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn 

10 in exile, in clouds and storms ; was censured, shot-at through 
his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world 
were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad vent- 
ure of it. I cannot apologise for Knox. To him it is very in- 
different, these two-hundred-and-fifty years or more, what 
men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of 
his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his vic- 
tory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors 
and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself. 
For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to 

20 his Nation was not of his seeking ; Knox had lived forty years 
quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the 
son of poor parents ; had got a college education ; become a 
Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content 
to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly 
intruding it on others. He had hved as Tutor in gentlemen's 
families ; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear 
his doctrine : resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the 
truth when called to do it ; not ambitious of more ; not fancy- 
ing himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he 

30 had reached the age of forty ; was with the small body of 
Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle, 
— when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing 
his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said 
suddenly. That there ought to be other speakers, that all 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 59 

men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to 
speak ; — which gifts and heart one of their own number, 
John Knox the name of him, had: Had he not? said the 
Preacher, appeahng to all the audience: what then is his 
duty ? The people answered affirmatively ; it was a criminal 
forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was 
in him silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand-up; he 
attempted to reply ; he could say no word ; — burst into a 
flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that 
scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He 10 
felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He 
felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized withal. 
He 'burst into tears.' 

Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, 
applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere 
that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, 
is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he 
holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for 
him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. How- 
ever feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that 20 
only can he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River 
Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. 
Andrew's was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves, — some 
officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image of the 
Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, 
should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said 
Knox, when the turn came to him : This is no Mother of God : 
this is 'a pented bredd,^ — a piece of wood, I tell you, with 
paint on it ! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for 
being worshipped, added Knox ; and flung the thing into the 30 
river. It was not very cheap jesting there : but come of it 
what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue 
nothing other than the real truth; it was a pented bredd: 
worship it he would not. 



l6o HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



I 



He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to 
of courage ; the Cause they had was the true one, and must 
and would prosper ; the whole world could not put it down. 
ReaHty is of God's making ; it is alone strong. How many 
pented bredds, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than 
to be worshipped ! — This Knox cannot live but by fact : 
he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. 
He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, be- 
comes heroic : it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox 

lo a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one ; — 
a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: 
but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, 
as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask. What 
equal he has ? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. 
^^He lies there,'' said the Earl of Morton at his grave, '^who 
never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any 
of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexi- 
bility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to God's 
truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake 

20 truth : an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh 
Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for 
that ; not require him to be other. 

Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used 
to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been 
much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness 
fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative 
of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I 
must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They 
are not so coarse, these speeches ; they seem to me about 

30 as fine as the circumstances would permit ! Knox was not 
there to do the courtier ; he came on another errand. Who- 
ever, reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks 
they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate 
high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them alto- 



THE HERO AS PRIEST l6l 

gether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with 
the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation 
and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the 
land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious 
Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of False- 
hoods, Formulas and the DeviFs Cause, had no method of 
making himself agreeable! ^^ Better that women weep,'' 
said Morton, '^than that bearded men be forced to weep.'' 
Knox was the constitutional opposition-party in Scotland: 
the Nobles of the country, called by their station to take that lo 
post, were not found in it ; Knox had to go, or no one. The 
hapless Queen ; — but the still more hapless Country, if she 
were made happy ! Mary herself was not without sharp- 
ness enough, among her other qualities: "Who are you," 
said she once, "that presume to school the nobles and sover- 
eign of this realm?" — "Madam, a subject born within the 
same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the ^sub- 
ject' have truth to speak, it is not the 'subject's' footing that 
will fail him here. — 

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is 20 
good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at 
bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what 
is tolerance ? Tolerance has to tolerate the wwessential ; 
and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, 
measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no 
longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to 
tolerate ! We are here to resist, to control and vanquish 
withal. We do not ' tolerate ' Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniq- 
uities, when they fasten on us ; we say to them. Thou art 
false, thou art not tolerable ! We are here to extinguish 30 
Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way ! 
I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the 
thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full 
surely, intolerant. 



1 62 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, for 
teaching the truth in his own land, cannot always be in 
the mildest humour ! I am not prepared to say that Knox 
had a soft temper ; nor do I know that he had what we call 
an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind 
honest affections dwelt in the much-enduring, hardworn, 
ever-battling man. That he could rebuke Queens, and had 
such weight among those proud turbulent Nobles, proud 
enough whatever else they were ; and could maintain to the 

loend a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that 
wild realm, he who was only ^ a subject born within the same, ' 
this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, 
to be no mean acrid man ; but at heart a healthful, strong, 
sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They 
blame him for puUing-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he 
were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse 
is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of 
it, if we examine 1 Knox wanted no puUing-down of stone 
edifices ; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out 

20 of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element ; it was the 
tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in 
that. Every such man is the born enemy of Disorder; 
hates to be in it : but what then ? Smooth Falsehood is not 
Order; it is the general sum total of Disorder. Order is 
Truth, — each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it : 
Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. 

Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of 
drollery in him ; which I like much, in combination with his 
other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His 

30 History, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened 
with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathe- 
dral, quarrel about precedence ; march rapidly up, take to 
hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at 
last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 1 63 

sight for him everyway ! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness 
alone ; though there is enough of that too. But a true, lov- 
ing, illuminating laugh mounts-up over the earnest visage; 
not a loud laugh ; you would say, a laugh in the eyes most 
of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the 
high, brother also to the low ; sincere in his sympathy with 
both. He had his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that 
old Edinburgh house of his ; a cheery social man, with faces 
that loved him ! They go far wrong who think this Knox 
was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: 10 
he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, 
patient ; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. 
In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to 
the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in 
him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself 
knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many 
things which do not vitally concern him, — ^^They? what 
are they ? '' But the thing which does vitally concern him, 
that thing he will speak of ; and in a tone the whole world 
shall be made to hear : all the more emphatic for his long 20 
silence. 

This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man ! — 
He had a sore fight of an existence : wrestling with Popes 
and Principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; 
rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore 
fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?" they asked him 
in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He 
hfted his finger, 'pointed upwards with his finger,' and so 
died. Honour to him ! His works have not died. The letter 
of his work dies, as of all men's ; but the spirit of it never. 30 

One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The 
unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up 
Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove 
to make the Government of Scotland a Theocracy. This 




1 64 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin ; 
for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he 
did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theoc- 
racy, or Government of God. He did mean that Kings and 
Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or 
private, diplomatising or whatever else they might be doing, 
should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and under- 
stand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He 
hoped once to see such a thing realised; and the Petition, 

lo Thy Kingdom come, no longer an empty word. He was sore 
grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of 
the Church's property; when he expostulated that it was 
not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and 
should be turned to true churchly uses, education, schools, 
worship ; — and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a 
shrug of the shoulders, ^^It is a devout imagination V^ This 
was Knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously 
endeavoured after, to realise it. If we think his scheme of 
truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he 

20 could not realise it ; that it remained after two centuries of 
effort, unrealisable, and is a ^ devout imagination ' still. But 
how shall we blame him for struggling to reaUse it ? Theoc- 
racy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be strug- 
gled for ! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that 
purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy ; Cromwell wished 
it, fought for it ; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what 
all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or what- 
soever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish? 
That right and truth, or God's Law, reign supreme among 

30 men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's 
time, and namable in all times, a revealed ^Will of God') 
towards which the Reformer will insist that all be more and 
more approximated. All true Reformers, as I said, are by 
the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 165 

How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Prac- 
tice, and at what point our impatience with their non-intro- 
duction ought to begin, is always a question. I think we 
may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as 
they can contrive to do it ! If they are the true faith of men, 
all men ought to be more or less impatient always where they 
are not found introduced. There will never be wanting 
Regent-Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, 
^^A devout imagination!" We will praise the Hero-priest 
rather, who does what is in him to bring them in ; and wears- 10 
out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a 
God's Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not become 
too godlike ! 



LECTURE V 

THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BIJRNS 

[Tuesday, 19th May 1840.] 

Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Hero- 
ism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance 
in the remotest times ; some of them have ceased to be pos- 
sible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in 
this world. The Hero as Man of Letters, again, of which 
class we are to speak to-day, is altogether a product of these 
new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of Writing, or 
of Ready-writing which we call Printing, subsists, he may 
be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism 

10 for all future ages. He is, in various respects, a very sin- 
gular phenomenon. 

He is new, I say ; he has hardly lasted above a century 
in the world yet. Never, till about a hundred years ago, 
was there seen any figure of a Great Soul living apart in 
that anomalous manner ; endeavouring to speak-forth the 
inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find 
place and subsistence by what the world would please to 
give him for doing that. Much had been sold and bought, 
and left to make its own bargain in the marketplace ; but 

20 the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in 
that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and copy- 
wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat ; ruling (for 
this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole 
nations and generations who would, or would not, give him 
bread while living, — is a rather curious spectacle ! Few 
shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. 

166 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 167 

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into 
strange shapes : the world knows not well at any time what 
to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world ! It 
seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, 
should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship 
him as such ; some wise great Mahomet for one god- 
inspired, and religiously follow his Law for twelve centu- 
ries : but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, 
should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in the 
world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and ap- 10 
plauses thrown him, that he might live thereby ; this per- 
haps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder 
phasis of things ! — Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual 
always that determines the material, this same Man-of- 
Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important 
modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. 
What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. The 
world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant 
feature of the world's general position. Looking well at 
his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible 20 
for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have 
produced him, in which we ourselves live and work. 

There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine ; as 
in every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. If Hero 
be taken to mean genuine, then I say the Hero as Man of 
Letters will be found discharging a function for us which 
is ever honourable, ever the highest; and was once well 
known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such 
way as he has, the inspired soul of him ; all that a man, in 
any case, can do. I say inspired; for what we call ^origi-30 
nality,' ^sincerity,' ^genius,' the heroic quality we have no 
good name for, signifies that. The Hero is he who lives 
in the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine and 
Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the 



1 68 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



3 



Temporary, Trivial : his being is in that ; he declares that 
abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself 
abroad. His hfe, as we said before, is a piece of the ever- 
lasting heart of Nature herself : all men's life is, — but the 
weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in 
most times ; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, 
because it cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Let- 
ters, like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort 
as he can. Intrinsically it is the same function which the 

lo old generations named a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity for 
doing ; which all manner of Heroes, by speech or by act, 
are sent into the world to do. 

Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty 
years ago at Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of 
Lectures on this subject : ^ Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten, 
On the Nature of the Literarv Man.' Fichte, in conform- 
ity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was 
a distinguished teacher, declares first : That all things 
which we see or work with in this Earth, especially we 

20 ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensu- 
ous Appearance : that under all there lies, as the essence 
of them, what he calls the ' Divine Idea of the World ; ' this 
is the Reality which ' lies at the bottom of all Appearance.' 
To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognisable in 
the world ; they live merely, says Fichte, among the super- 
ficialities, practicalities and shows of the world, not 
dreaming that there is anything divine under them. But 
the Man of Letters is sent hither specially that he may 
discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this same 

30 Divine Idea : in every new generation it will manifest itself 
in a new dialect ; and he is there for the purpose of doing 
that. Such is Fichte's phraseology ; with which we need 
not quarrel. It is his way of naming what I here, by other 
words, am striving imperfectly to name ; what there is at 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 169 

present no name for : The unspeakable Divine Significance, 
full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that lies in the 
being of every man, of every thing, — the Presence of 
the God who made every man and thing. Mahomet taught 
this in his dialect ; Odin in his : it is the thing which all 
thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to 
teach. 

Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or 
as he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continually unfolding 
the Godlike to men : Men of Letters are a perpetual Priest- 10 
hood, from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still 
present in their life ; that all 'Appearance,' whatsoever we 
see in the world, is but as a vesture for the ' Divine Idea of 
the World,' for 'that which lies at the bottom of Appear- 
ance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, 
acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness : he is the 
light of the world ; the world's Priest ; — guiding it, like a 
sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the 
waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the 
true Literary Man, what we here call the Hero as Man of 20 
Letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever lives 
not wholly in this Divine Idea, or living partially in it, 
struggles not, as for the one good, to live wholly in it, — he 
is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and pros- 
perities he like, no Literary Man; he is, says Fichte, a 
'Bungler, Stumper.'* Or at best, if he belong to the prosaic 
provinces, he may be a 'Hodman;' Fichte even calls him 
elsewhere a 'Nonentity,' and has in short no mercy for 
him, no wish that he should continue happy among us ! 
This is Fichte's notion of the Man of Letters. It means, 30 
in its own form, precisely what we here mean. 

In this point of view, I consider that, for the last hun- 
dred years, by far the notablest of all Literary Men is 
Fichte's countryman, Goethe. To that man too, in a 



170 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



1 

the! 



strange way, there was given what we may call a life in 
Divine Idea of the World; vision of the inward divine 
mystery : and strangely, out of his Books, the world rises 
imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and temple 
of a God. Illuminated all, not in fierce impure fire-splen- 
dour as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance ; — 
really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic times ; to my 
mind, by far the greatest, though one of the quietest, 
among all the great things that have come to pass in them. 

10 Our chosen specimen of the Hero as Literary Man would 
be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant plan for me 
here to discourse of his heroism : for I consider him to be 
a true Hero ; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps 
still more in what he did not say and did not do ; to me a 
noble spectacle : a great heroic ancient man, speaking and 
keeping silence as an ancient Hero, in the guise of a most 
modern, high-bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters ! We 
have had no such spectacle ; no man capable of affording 
such, for the last hundred-and-fifty years. 

20 But at present, such is the general state of knowledge 
about Goethe, it were worse than useless to attempt speak- 
ing of him in this case. Speak as I might, Goethe, to the 
great majority of you, would remain problematic, vague; 
no impression but a false one could be realised. Him we 
must leave to future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, 
three great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior 
state of circumstances, will suit us better here. Three men 
of the Eighteenth Century ; the conditions of their life far 
more resemble what those of ours still are in England, than 

30 what Goethe's in Germany were. Alas, these men did not 
conquer like him ; they fought bravely, and fell. They 
were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of 
it. They lived under galling conditions; struggling as 
under mountains of impediment, and could not unfold 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 171 

themselves into clearness, or victorious interpretation of 
that ^Divine Idea/ It is rather the Tombs of three Liter- 
ary Heroes that I have to show you. There are the 
monumental heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie 
buried. Very mournful, but also great and full of interest 
for us. We will linger by them for a while. 

Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we 
call the disorganised condition of society : how ill many 
arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many 
powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, 10 
altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, 
as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books 
and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, 
the summary of all other disorganisation ; — a sort of 
heart, from which, and to which, all other confusion circu- 
lates in the world 1 Considering what Book-writers do in 
the world, and what the world does with Book- writers, I 
should say. It is the most anomalous thing the world at 
present has to show. — We should get into a sea far be- 
yond sounding, did we attempt to give account of this : 20 
but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The 
worst element in the life of these three Literary Heroes 
was, that they found their business and position such a 
chaos. On the beaten road there is tolerable travelling ; 
but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a 
path through the impassable ! 

Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay in 
the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made en- 
dowments, regulations ; everywhere in the civilised world 
there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of complex 30 
dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a 
man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his 
fellow-men. They felt that this was the most important 



172 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

thing ; that without this there was no good thing. It is a 
right pious work, that of theirs ; beautiful to behold ! But 
now with the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a 
total change has come over that business. The Writer of 
a Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to this parish 
or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and 
places ? Surely it is of the last importance that he do his 
work right, whoever do it wrong ; — that the eye report not 
falsely, for then all the other members are astray ! Well ; 

lo how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, 
or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has 
taken the pains to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, try- 
ing to get some money for his books, if lucky, he is of some 
importance ; to no other man of any. Whence he came, 
whither he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he 
might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an 
accident in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in 
a world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the 
guidance or the misguidance ! 

20 Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all 
things man has devised. Odin's Rimes were the first form 
of the work of a Hero ; Books, written words, are still mi- 
raculous Runes, the latest form ! In Books lies the soul of 
the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the 
Past, when the body and material substance of it has alto- 
gether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, 
harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many- 
engined, — they are precious, great : but what do they 
become ? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, 

30 and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined frag- 
ments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks : but the Books 
of Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, still very 
literally lives ; can be called-up again into life. No magic 
Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 173 

thought, gained or been : it is lying as in magic preserva- 
tion in the pages of Books. They are the chosen posses- 
sion of men. 

Do not Books still accomplish miracles^ as Runes were 
fabled to do ? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest 
circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con 
in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual prac- 
tical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So 
^Celia' felt, so ^Clifford' acted: the foolish Theorem of 
Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a 10 
solid Practice one day. Consider whether any Rune in the 
wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did such wonders 
as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done ! 
What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of 
the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book, — the word 
partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish 
herds, four-thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of 
Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. 
With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an 
inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the 20 
true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, 
with a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, 
the Past and Distant with the Present in time and place ; 
all times and all places with this our actual Here and Now. 
All things were altered for men ; all modes of important 
work of men : teaching, preaching, governing, and all else. 

To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a 
notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their 
existence too is modified, to the vary basis of it, by the 
existence of Books. Universities arose while there were yet 30 
no Books procurable ; while a man, for a single Book, had to 
give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when 
a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it 
by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a ne- 



174 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

cessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, 
you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many 
as thirty-thousand, went to hear Abelard and that meta- 
physical theology of his. And now for any other teacher 
who had also something of his own to teach, there was a 
great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to 
learn were already assembled yonder ; of all places the best 
place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better 
still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there 

locame. It only needed now that the King took notice of 
this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the 
various schools into one school ; gave it edifices, privileges, 
encouragements, and named it UniversitaSy or School of all 
Sciences : the University of Paris, in its essential char- 
acters, was there. The model of all subsequent Universi- 
ties ; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, 
have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was 
the origin of Universities. 

It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, 

20 facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the busi- 
ness from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Print- 
ing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded 
them ! The Teacher needed not now to gather men per- 
sonally round him, that he might speak to them what he 
knew : print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for 
a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectu- 
ally to learn it ! — Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in 
Speech ; even writers of Books may still, in some circum- 
stances, find it convenient to speak also, — witness our 

30 present meeting here ! There is, one would say, and must 
ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province 
for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard 
to all things this must remain ; to Universities among others. 
But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 1 75 

out, ascertained ; much less put in practice : the University 
which would completely take-in that great new fact, of the 
existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing 
for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the 
Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think 
of it, all that a University, or final. highest School can do 
for us, is still but what the first School began doing, — 
teach us to read. We learn to readj in various languages, in 
various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all 
manner of Books. But the place where we are to get know- 10 
ledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves ! 
It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors 
have done their best for us. The true University of these 
days is a Collection of Books. 

But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduc- 
tion of Books. The Church is the working recognised 
Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise 
teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writ- 
ing, even while there was no Easy-writing or Printing, the 20 
preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of per- 
forming this. But now with Books ! — He that can write a 
true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and 
Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England? 
I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, 
Poems, Books, these are the real working effective Church 
of a modern country. Nay, not only our preaching, but 
even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of 
Printed Books ? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul 
has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody 30 
into our hearts, — is not this essentially, if we will under- 
stand it, of the nature of worship ? There are many, in all 
countries, who, in this confused time, have no other method 
of worship. He who, in any way, shows us better than we 



176 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

knew before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not 
show it us as an efHuence of the Fountain of all Beauty; 
as the handwriting, made visible there, of the great Maker 
of the Universe ? He has sung for us, made us sing with 
him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How 
much more he who sin^s, who says, or in any way brings 
home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, darings and 
endurances of a brother man ! He has verily touched our 
hearts as with a live coal from the altar. Perhaps there is 

10 no worship more authentic. 

Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an ^apocalypse of 
Nature,' a revealing of the ^open secret.' It may well 
enough be named, in Fichte's style, a ^continuous revela- 
tion' of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Common. The 
Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there ; is brought 
out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees 
of clearness : all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful 
indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, may 

20 have touches of it ; nay the withered mockery of a French 
sceptic, — his mockery of the False, a love and worship of 
the True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shaks- 
peare, of a Goethe ; the cathedral-music of a Milton ! They 
are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes of a 
Burns, — skylark, starting from the humble furrow, far over- 
head into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely 
there ! For all true singing is of the nature of worship ; 
as indeed 'all true working may be said to be, — whereof 
such singing is but the record, and fit melodious representa- 

sotion, to us. Fragments of real ^Church Liturgy' and 
^Body of Homilies,' strangely disguised from the common 
eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of 
Printed Speech we loosely call Literature ! Books are our 
Church too. 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 1 77 

Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenage- 
mote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of 
the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we 
fvere to do as a nation. But does not, though the name 
Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, 
everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive 
way, out of Parliament altogether ? Burke said there were 
Three Estates in Parliament ; but, in the Reporters' Gallery 
yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than 
they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying ; it ic 
is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these times. 
Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes 
necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to De- 
mocracy : invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writ- 
ing brings Printing ; brings universal everyday extempore 
Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speak- 
ing now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of 
government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all 
acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what 
revenues or garnitures : the requisite thing is, that he have 20 
a tongue which others will listen to ; this and nothing more 
is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue 
in the nation : Democracy is virtually there. Add only, 
that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, 
organised ; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, 
obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unen- 
cumbered, visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will 
insist on becoming palpably extant. — 

On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of 
the things which man can do or make here below, by far 30 
the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things 
we call Books ! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black 
ink on them ; — from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred 
Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are they not 



178 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

doing ! — For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the 
thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not 
verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that pro- 
duces a Book? It is the Thought of man; the true thau- 
maturgic virtue ; by which man works all things whatsoever. 
All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a 
Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, 
steamengines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable trafl&c and 
tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts 

10 made into One ; — a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, 
embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust. Palaces, Parlia- 
ments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of 
it ! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the 
making of that brick. — The thing we called ^bits of paper 
with traces of black ink,' is the purest embodiment a Thought 
of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest 
and noblest. 

All this, of the importance and supreme importance of 
the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is 

20 to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the 
Senatus Academicus and much else, has been admitted for a 
good while; and recognised often enough, in late times, 
with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It 
seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will have to give 
place to the Practical. If Men of Letters are so incal- 
culably influential, actually performing such work for us 
from age to age, and even from day to day, then I think we 
may conclude that Men of Letters will not always wander 
like imrecognised unregulated Ishmaelites among us ! What- 

30 soever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power 
will cast-off its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth one 
day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. 
That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a 
function which is done by quite another: there can be no 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 1 79 

profit in this ; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, 
the making of it right, — what a business, for long times to 
come ! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation of the 
Literary Guild is still a great way off, encumbered with 
all manner of complexities. If you asked me what were 
the best possible organisation for the Men of Letters in 
modern society; the arrangement of furtherance and regu- 
lation, grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of 
their position and of the world's position, — I should beg 
to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty ! It is not 10 
one man's faculty ; it is that of many successive men turned 
earnestly upon it, that will bring out even an approximate 
solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us 
could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst ? I answer : 
This which we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in 
it ; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there 
is yet a long way. 

One remark I must not omit. That royal or parliamentary 
grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted ! 
To give our Men of Letters stipends, endowments and all 20 
furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. On 
the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence 
of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is 
no evil to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men 
poor, — to show whether they are genuine or not ! Men- 
dicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to beg, were 
instituted in the Christian Church; a most natural and 
even necessary development of the spirit of Christianity. 
It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, 
Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degrada-30 
tion. We may say, that he who has not known those things, 
and learned from them the priceless lessons they have 
to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To 
beg, and go barefoot in coarse woollen cloak with a rope 



l8o HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

round your loins, and be despised of all the world, was no 
beautiful business ; — nor an honourable one in any eye, 
till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honoured 
of some ! 

Begging is not in our course at the present time: but 
for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not per- 
haps the better for being poor? It is needful for him, at 
all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any 
kind is not the goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill- 

lo conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in 
every heart ; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart, — 
to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from 
it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made- 
out even less then Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows 
but, in that same 'best possible organisation' as yet far off, 
Poverty may still enter as an important element ? What if 
our Men of Letters, men setting-up to be Spiritual Heroes, 
were still theriy as they now are, a kind of ' involuntary monas- 
tic order ; ' bound still to this same ugly Poverty, — till they 

20 had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make 
it too do for them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but it 
cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and con- 
fine it there ; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get 
farther. 

Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season 
for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled, — how is the 
Burns to be recognised that merits these? He must pass 
through the ordeal, and prove himself. This ordeal; this 
wild welter of a chaos which is called Literary Life: this 

30 too is a kind of ordeal ! There is clear truth in the idea 
that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards 
the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever con- 
tinue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand 
elsewhere than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS i8l 

universal struggle of these constitutes, and must constitute, 
what is called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, 
as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that strug- 
gle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at 
the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, 
one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving 
saved, nine-hundred-and-ninty-nine lost by the way ; your 
royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed 
to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken- 
hearted as a Ganger; your Rousseau driven into madio 
exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his para- 
doxes : this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regula- 
tion. The best J alas, is far from us ! 

And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming ; advanc- 
ing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is 
a prophecy one can risk. For so soon as men get to dis- 
cern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about 
arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, 
in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I 
say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes 20 
at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable 
for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. 
This is a fact which he who runs may read, — and draw 
inferences from. "Literature will take care of itself, '^ 
answered Mr. Pitt, when applied-to for some help for Burns. 
"Yes,'' adds Mr. Southey, "it will take care of itself; and 
of you too, if you do not look to it !" 

The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momen- 
tous one ; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction 
of the great body; they can struggle on, and live or else 30 
die, as they have been wont. But it deeply concerns the 
whole society, whether it will set its light on high places, 
to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it 
in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as 



1 82 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

heretofore ! Light is the one thing wanted for the world. 
Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight 
its battle victoriously, and be the best world man qan make 
it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic Literary Class the 
heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; 
some good arrangement for that would be as the punctum 
saliens of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Al- 
ready, in some European countries, in France, in Prussia, 
one traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary 

lo Class ; indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe 
that it is possible ; that it will have to be possible. 

By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chi- 
nese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but 
which excites endless curiosity even in the dim state : this 
namely, that they do attempt to make their Men of Letters 
their Governors ! It would be rash to say, one understood 
how this was done, or with what degree of success it was 
done. All such things must be very iz/zsuccessf ul ; yet a 
small degree of success is precious ; the very attempt how 

20 precious ! There does seem to be, all over China, a more 
or less active search everywhere to discover the men of 
talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there 
are for every one : a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. 
The youths who distinguish themselves in the lower school 
are promoted into favourable stations in the higher, that 
they may still more distinguish themselves, — forward and 
forward: it appears to be out of these that the Official 
Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. These are 
they whom they try first, whether they can govern or not. 

30 And surely with the best hope: for they are the men that 
have . already shown intellect. Try them : they have not 
governed or administered as yet; perhaps they cannot; 
but there is no doubt they have some Understanding, — 
without which no man can ! Neither is Understanding a 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 183 

tool^ as we are too apt to figure; 'it is a hand which can 
handle any tool/ Try these men: they are of all others 
the best worth trying. — Surely there is no kind of govern- 
ment, constitution, revolution, social apparatus, or arrange- 
ment, that I know of in this world, so promising to one's 
scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the top 
of affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolu- 
tions, if they have any aim. For the man of true intellect, 
as I assert and believe always, is the noblehearted man 
withal, the true, just, humane and valiant man. Get him 10 
for governor, all is got ; fail to get him, though you had 
Constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in 
every village, there is nothing yet got ! — 

These things look strange, truly ; and are not such as we 
commonly speculate upon. But we are fallen into strange 
times; these things will require to be speculated upon; to 
be rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. 
These, and many others. On all hands of us, there is the 
announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of 
Routine has ended ; that to say a thing has long been, is 20 
no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have 
been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence ; 
large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, 
are no longer capable of living at all by the things which 
have been. When millions of men can no longer by their 
utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and the ' third 
man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate 
potatoes,' the things which have been must decidedly pre- 
pare to alter themselves ! — I will now quit this of the 
organisation of Men of Letters. 30 

Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Literary 
Heroes of ours was not the want of organisation for Men 
of Letters, but a far deeper one ; out of which, indeed, this 



1 84 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

and so many other evils for the Literary Man, and for all 
men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. That our 
Hero as Man of Letters had to travel without highway, 
companionless, through an inorganic chaos, — and to leave 
his own hfe and faculty lying there, as a partial contribu- 
tion towards pushing some highway through it: this, had 
not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralysed, he 
might have put-up with, might have considered to be but 
the common lot of Heroes. His fatal misery was the spirit- 

lo ual paralysis, so we may name it, of the Age in which his 
life lay; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half- 
paralysed ! The Eighteenth was a Sceptical Century ; in 
which little word there is a whole Pandora's Box of miser- 
ies. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but 
moral Doubt; all sorts of ^fidelity, insincerity, spiritual 
paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify 
since the world began, was a life of Heroism more diflQcult 
for a man. That was not an age of Faith, — an age of 
Heroes ! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it 

20 were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism 
was gone forever; Triviality, Formulism and Common- 
place were come forever. The ^age of miracles' had been, 
or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. An 
effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could 
not now dwell ; — in one word, a godless world ! 

How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this 
time, — compared not with the Christian Shakspeares and 
Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, with any species 
of believing men ! The living Tree Igdrasil, with the 

30 melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep- 
rooted as Hela, has died- out into the clanking of a World- 
Machine. ^Tree' and 'Machine:' contrast these two 
things. I, for my share, declare the world to be no machine ! 
I say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion 'motives,' 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 185 

self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something 
far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and par- 
liamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not 
a machine at all ! — The old Norse Heathen had a truer 
notion of God's-world than these poor Machine-Sceptics: 
the old Heathen Norse were sincere men. But for these 
poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half- 
truth and hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most men, 
meant plausibility ; to be measured by the number of votes 
you could get. They had lost any notion that sincerity 10 
was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausi- 
bilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of of- 
fended virtue. What ! am not I sincere ? Spiritual Paralysis, 
I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the char- 
acteristic of that century. For the common man, unless 
happily he stood below his century and belonged to another 
prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he 
lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To 
the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion 
was it possible to work himself half-loose; and lead as it 20 
were, in an enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual death- 
in-hfe, and be a Half-Hero ! 

Scepticism is the name we give to all this ; as the chief 
symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concerning which 
so much were to be said ! It would take many Discourses, 
not a small fraction of one Discourse, to state what one. 
feels about that Eighteenth Century and its ways. As 
indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call Scepti- 
cism, is precisely the black malady and life-foe, against 
which all teaching and discoursing since man's life began 30 
has directed itself: the battle of Belief against Unbelief is 
the never-ending battle ! Neither is it in the way of crim- 
ination that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that 
century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of be- 



1 86 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 






lieving, the preparation afar off for new better and wider 
ways, — an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for 
it; we will lament their hard fate. We will understand J | 
that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlast- 
ing substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as 
we see it, is not an end but a beginning. 

The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, 
of Bentham's theory of man and man's life, I chanced to 
call it a more beggarly one than Mahomet's. I am bound 

lo to say, now when it is once uttered, that such is my delib- 
erate opinion. Not that one would mean offence against 
the man Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe 
him. Bentham himself, and even the creed of Bentham, 
seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. It is a deter- 
minate being what all the world, in a cowardly half-and-half 
manner, was tending to be. Let us have the crisis ; we 
shall either have death or the cure. I call this gross, steam- 
engine Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. It 
was a laying-down of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well 

20 then, this world is a dead iron machine, the god of it Gravi- 
tation and selfish Hunger; let us see what, by checking 
and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, 
can be made of it !" Benthamism has something complete, 
manful, in such fearless committal of itself to what it finds 
true; you may call it Heroic, though a Heroism with its 
eyes put out ! It is the culminating point, and fearless 
ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading 
man's whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It 
seems to me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers 

30 of it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they have courage 
and honesty. Benthamism is an eyeless Heroism: the 
Human Species, like a hapless blinded Samson grinding in 
the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of its 
Mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance 
withal. Of Bentham I meant to say no harm. 



! 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 187 

But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and 
lay to heart, that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism 
in the Universe has in the fatalest way missed the secret 
of the Universe altogether. That all Godhood should van- 
ish out of men's conception of this Universe seems to me 
precisely the most brutal error, — I will not disparage 
Heathenism by calUng it a Heathen error, — that men 
could fall into. It is not true ; it is false at the very heart 
of it. A man who thinks so will think wrong about all 
things in the world ; this original sin will vitiate all other 10 
conclusions he can form. One might call it the most 
lamentable of Delusions, — not forgetting Witchcraft it- 
self ! Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil ; but 
this worships a dead iron Devil ; no God, not even a Devil ! 
— Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops thereby out 
of Ufe. There remains everywhere in life a despicable 
caput-mortuum ; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. 
How can a man act heroically? The ^Doctrine of Mo- 
tives' will teach him that it is, under more or less disguise, 
nothing but a wretched love of Pleasure, fear of Pain ; that 20 
Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may 
be, is the ultimate fact of man's Hf e. Atheism, in brief ; — 
which does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I 
say, is become spiritually a paralytic man; this godlike 
Universe a dead mechanical steamengine, all working by 
motives, checks, balances, and I know not what; wherein, 
as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris'-Bull of his own 
contriving, he, the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying ! 

Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It 
is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to 30 
believe ; — indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have 
our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but 
that it may see into something, give us clear beUef and 
understanding about something, whereon we are then to 



1 88 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Cer- 
tainly we do not rush out, clutch- up the first thing we find, 
and straightway believe that ! All manner of doubt, in- 
quiry, or/cei/^t? as it is named, about all manner of objects, 
dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working 
of the mind, on the object it is getting to know and believe. 
Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree 
from its hidden roots. But now if, even on common things, 
we require that a man keep his doubts silent, and not babble 

10 of them till they in some measure become aflSrmations or 
denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, 
impossible to speak-of in words at all ! That a man parade 
his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which 
means at best only the manner of telling us your thought, 
your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and 
true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you 
should overturn the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves 
and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned-up into the 
air, — and no growth, only death and misery going-on ! 

20 For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it 
is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole 
soul. A man lives by believing something ; not by debat- 
ing and arguing about many things. A sad case for him 
when all that he can manage to believe is something he 
can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ 
eat and digest ! Lower than that he will not get. We call 
those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest 
and meanest of all ages. The world's heart is palsied, sick : 
how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases 

30 in all departments of the world's work; dextrous Simili- 
tude of Acting begins. The world's wages are pocketed, 
the world's work is not done. Heroes have gone-out; 
Quacks have come-in. Accordingly, what Century, since 
the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 189 

scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds 
with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with 
their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue, benevo- 
lence, — the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the 
head of them ! Few men were without quackery ; they had 
got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam for 
truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down 
to the House, all wrapt and bandaged; he ^has crawled 
out in great bodily suffering,' and so on ; — forgets, says 
Walpole, that he is acting the sick man ; in the fire of de- 10 
bate, snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically 
swings and brandishes it ! Chatham himself lives the 
strangest mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. For 
indeed the world is full of dupes ; and you have to gain 
the world^s suffrage ! How the duties of the world will be 
done in that case, what quantities of error, which means 
failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to 
many, will gradually accumulate in all provinces of the 
world's business, we need not compute. 

It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of 20 
the world's maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. 
An insincere world ; a godless untruth of a world ! It is 
out of this, as I consider, that the whole tribe of social pesti- 
lences, French Revolutions, Chartisms, and what not, 
have derived their being, — their chief necessity to be. 
This must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially 
alter. My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable conso- 
lation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this 
is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who 
knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plau-30 
sibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or 
paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with God- 
hood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days ! 
One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by 



igo HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever 
will take the spectacles off his eyes and honestly look, to 
know ! For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its 
unblessed Products, is already past : a new century is already 
come. The old unblessed Products and Performances, 
as soKd as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily 
to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very great-looking 
Simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, 
he can say, composedly stepping aside : Thou art not true; 

lo thou art not extant, only semblant ; go thy way ! — Yes, 
hollow FormuHsm, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic 
atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. 
An imbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an exception, 
— such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the 
world will once more become sincere; a believing world; 
with many Heroes in it, a heroic world ! It will then be a 
victorious world; never till then. 

Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men 
speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let 

20 the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victori- 
ous, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One Life; a 
little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second 
chance to us forevermore ! It were well for us to live not 
as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The 
world's being saved will not save us ; nor the world's be- 
ing lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves : there is 
great merit here in the ^duty of staying at home'! And, 
on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of 'worlds' being 
'saved' in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is 

30 itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sen- 
timentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving 
of the world I will trust confidently to the Maker of the 
world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am 
more competent to ! — In brief, for the world's sake, and 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 191 

for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insin- 
cerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are 
going, and as good as gone. — 

Now it was under such conditions, in those times of 
Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in 
which there was properly no truth in life. Old truths had 
fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to 
speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and 
Fact, and would forever continue such, no new intimation, 
in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. No intimation ; 10 
not even any French Revolution, — which we define to be 
a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in hellfire ! How 
different was the Luther's pilgrimage, with its assured goal, 
from the Johnson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, 
grown now incredible, unintelligible ! Mahomet's Form- 
ulas were of ^wood waxed and oiled,' and could be burnt 
out of one's way: poor Johnson's were far more difficult 
to burn. — The strong man will ever find work, which 
means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. 
But to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our 20 
poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difl&cult 
than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisation. Bookseller 
Osborne and Four-pence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; 
but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No 
landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having 
no loadstar in the Heaven ! We need not wonder that none 
of those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly 
is the highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will 
contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, 
the Tombs of three fallen Heroes ! They fell for us too ; 30 
making a way for us. There are the mountains which 
they hurled abroad in their confused War of the Giants; 
under which, their strength and life spent, they now lie buried. 

I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, 



192 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

expressly or incidentally ; what I suppose is known to most 
of you ; what need not be spoken or written a second time. 
They concern us here as the singular Prophets of that singular 
age ; for such they virtually were ; and the aspect they and 
their world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us 
into reflections enough ! I call them, all three. Genuine 
Men more or less ; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, 
struggling, to be genuine, and plant themselves on the 
everlasting truth of things. This to a degree that emi- 

lonently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of 
their contemporaries ; and renders them worthy to be con- 
sidered as Speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting 
truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. By Nature herself 
a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were 
men of such magnitude that they could not live on unreal- 
ities, — clouds, froth and all inanity gave- way under them : 
there was no footing for them but on firm earth; no rest 
or regular motion for them, if they got not footing there. 
To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature once more in 

20 an age of Artifice; once more. Original Men. 

As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by 
nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and noble 
man ; so much left undeveloped in him to the last : in a 
kindlier element what might he not have been, — Poet, 
Priest, sovereign Ruler ! On the whole, a man must not 
complain of his * element,' of his 'time,' or the like; it is 
thriftless work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he 
is there to make it better ! — Johnson's youth was poor, 
isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not 

30 seem possible that, in any the f avourablest outward circum- 
stances, Johnson's life could have been other than a pain- 
ful one. The world might have had more of profitable work 
out of him or less ; but his efort against the world's work 
could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 193 

his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of dis- 
eased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness 
were intimately and even inseparably connected with each 
other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about girt 
with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. 
Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, 
which shoots-in on him dull incurable misery : the Nessus'- 
shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin ! 
In this manner he had to live. Figure him there, with his 
scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and un- 10 
speakable chaos of thoughts ; stalking mournful as a stranger 
in this Earth ; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he 
could come at: school-languages and other merely gram- 
matical stuff, if there were nothing better ! The largest 
soul that was in all England ; and provision made for it 
of ^ fourpence-half penny a day.' Yet a giant invincible 
soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of 
the shoes at Oxford : the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned 
College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his 
shoes worn-out ; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner 20 
secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned 
Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with dim eyes, 
with what thoughts, — pitches them out of window ! Wet 
feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will ; but not beggary : 
we cannot stand beggary ! Rude stubborn self-help here ; 
a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and 
want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type 
of the man's life, this pitching-away of the shoes. An 
original man ; — not a secondhand, borrowing or begging 
man. Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate ! On such 30 
shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, if you 
will, but honestly on that ; — on the reality and substance 
which Nature gives us^ not on the semblance, on the thing 
she has given another than us ! — 



194 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self- 
help, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally 
submissive to what was really higher than he ? Great souls 
are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over 
them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not 
find a better proof of what I said the other day. That the 
sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in 
a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. 
The essence of originality is not that it be new : Johnson 

lo believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions 
credible for him, fit for him ; and in a right heroic manner 
lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to 
that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a 
mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths 
and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier 
was it for him that he could so stand : but in all formulas 
that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine 
substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so 
barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, 

20 the great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonder- 
ful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man 
too ! How he harmonised his Formulas with it, how he 
managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing 
worth seeing. A thing Ho be looked at with reverence, 
with pity, with awe.' That Church of St. Clement Danes, 
where Johnson still worshipped in the era of Voltaire, is to 
me a venerable place. 

It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking still in 
some sort from the heart of Nature, though in the current 

30 artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all 
dialects ' artificial ' ? Artificial things are not all false ; — 
nay eyery true Product of Nature will infallibly shape itself ; 
we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, 
true. What we call ^ Formulas ' are not in their origin bad ; 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 195 

they are indispensably good. Formula is method, habitude ; 
found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion them- 
selves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards 
some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. 
Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, 
finds-out a way of doing somewhat, — were it of uttering 
his soul's reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly 
saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do 
that, a poet; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought 
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way 10 
of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a 
'Path.' And now see: the second man travels naturally in 
the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the easiest method. In the 
footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with 
changes where such seem good ; at all events with enlarge- 
ments, the Path ever widening itself as more travel it ; — 
till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole 
world may travel and drive. While there remains a City 
or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, 
the Highway shall be right welcome ! When the City is 20 
gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all 
Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have 
come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas 
all begin by being full of substance ; you may call them 
the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of 
a substance that is already there: they had not been there 
otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they 
become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much 
as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant 
withal of the high significance of true Formulas; that they 30 
were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our 

habitation in this world. 

Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' 
He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere, — of 




196 ' HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

his being particularly anything ! A hard-struggling, weary- 
hearted man, or ^scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard 
to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, 
but to live — without stealing ! A noble unconsciousness 
is in him. He does not ' engrave Truth on his watch-seal ; ' 
no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and Hves 
by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man 
whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of 
all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders 

10 him incapable of being msincere! To his large, open, 
deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hear- 
say ; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let 
him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to 
forget it or deny it, is ever present to him, — fearful and 
wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of 
sincerity; unrecognised, because never questioned or capa- 
ble of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon : 
all the Great Men I ever heard-of have this as the primary 
material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are 

20 debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doc- 
trines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at sec- 
ondhand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He 
must have truth; truth which he feels to be true. How 
shall he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all moments, 
in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under 
the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of think- 
ing about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's 
was: but I recognise the everlasting element of heart- 
sincerity in both ; and see with pleasure how neither of them 

30 remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as chaff sown; in 
both of them is something which the seed-field will grouK 

Johnson was a Prophet to his people ; preached a Gospel 
to them, — as all like him always do. The highest Gospel 
he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence : 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 197 

'in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be 
known/ see how you will do it ! A thing well worth preach- 
ing. 'A world where much is to be done, and little is to 
be known : ' do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless 
abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting Unbelief; 

— you were miserable then, powerless, mad : how could you 
do or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and 
taught ; — ■ coupled, theoretically and practically, with this 
other great Gospel, ' Clear your mind of Cant ! ' Have no 
trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, 10 
but let it be in your own real torn shoes : ' that will be better 
for you,' as Mahomet says ! I call this, I call these two 
things joined together ^ a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps 
that was possible at that time. 

Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and 
celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned by the young genera- 
tion. It is not wonderful; Johnson's opinions are fast 
becoming obsolete : but his style of thinking and of living, 
we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in John- 
son's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect 20 
and a great heart ; — ever welcome, under what obstructions 
and perversions soever. They are sincere words, those 
of his; he means things by then. A wondrous buckram 
style, — the best he could get to then ; a measured grandilo- 
quence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn 
way, grown obsolete now ; sometimes a tumid size of phrase- 
ology not in proportion to the contents of it: all this you 
will put-up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has 
always something within it. So many beautiful styles and 
books, with nothing in them ; — a man is a maleidiCtor to 30 
the world who writes such ! They are the avoidable kind ! 

— Had Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, one might 
have traced there a great intellect, a geniune man. Look- 
ing to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, 



198 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

insight and successful method, it may be called the best of 
all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural 
nobleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built 
edifice, finished, symmetrically complete : you judge that 
a true Builder did it. 

One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor 
Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature ; 
and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence 
for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish con- 

loceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, 
approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty 
irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine 
reverence for Excellence; a worship for Heroes, at a time 
when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. 
Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain worship 
of them ! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether 
that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his 
valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but 
the Valet's : that his soul, namely, is a mean valet-s^ovl ! 

20 He expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, 
with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets 
sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can 
be a Grand-Monargue to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your 
Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is left nothing 
but a poor forked raddish with a head fantastically carved ; 
— admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero 
when he sees him ! Alas, no : it requires a kind of Hero to 
do that ; — and one of the world's wants, in this as in other 
senses, is for most part want of such. 

30 On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration 
was well bestowed ; that he could have found no soul in all 
England so worthy of bending down before? Shall we not 
say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his 
difficult confused existence wisely; led it well, like a right- 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 199 

valiant man ? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade ; 
that waste choas of Scepticism in reHgion and politics, in 
life-theory and life-practice ; in his poverty, in his dust and 
dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made 
it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly without a 
loadstar in the Eternal ; he had still a loadstar, as the brave 
all need to have : with his eye set on that, he would change 
his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower 
sea of Time. 'To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and 
hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag.' Brave old 10 
Samuel: uUimus Romanorum! 

Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He 
is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spas- 
modic man; at best, intense rather than strong. He had 
not 'the talent of Silence,' an invaluable talent; which few 
Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel 
in ! The suffering man ought really ' to consume his own 
smoke ;' there is no good in emitting smoke till you have 
made it into fire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, 
all smoke is capable of becoming ! Rousseau has not depth 20 
or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first character- 
istic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call 
vehemence and rigidity strength ! A man is not strong 
who takes convulsion-fits ; though six men cannot hold him 
then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight with- 
out staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, 
especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves 
of that. A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come 
for speaking and acting, is no right man. 

Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A high 30 
but narrow contracted intensity in it: bony brows; deep, 
strait-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered- 
looking, — bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. A face 



200 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of the antago- 
nism against that; something mean, plebeian there, re- 
deemed only by intensity : the face of what is called a Fanatic, 
— a sadly contracted Hero ! We name him here because, 
with all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first 
and chief characteristic of a Hero : he is heartily in earnest. 
In earnest, if ever man was; as none of these French Phi- 
losophers were. Nay, one would say, of an earnestness too 
great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature; and 

lo which indeed in the end drove him into the strangest inco- 
herences, almost delirations. There had come, at last, to 
be a kind of madness in him: his Ideas possessed him like 
demons; hurried him so about, drove him over steep 
places! — 

The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we easily 
name by a single word. Egoism; which is indeed the source 
and summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. He 
had not perfected himself into victory over mere Desire ; a 
mean Hunger, in many sorts, was still the motive principle 

20 of him. I am afraid he was a very vain man ; hungry for 
the praises of men. You remember Genlis's experience of 
him. She took Jean Jacques to the Theatre; he bargain- 
ing for a strict incognito, — ^^He would not be seen there 
for the world!" The curtain did happen nevertheless to 
be drawn aside : the Pit recognised Jean Jacques, but took 
no great notice of him ! He expressed the bitterest indig- 
nation; gloomed all evening, spake no other than surly 
words. The glib Countess remained entirely convinced 
that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being 

30 applauded when seen. How the whole nature of the man 
is poisoned; nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce 
moody ways ! He could not live with anybody. A man 
of some rank from the country, who visited him often, and 
used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and affection 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 20I 

for him, comes one day, finds Jean Jacques full of the 
sourest unintelligible humour. ^^ Monsieur," said Jean 
Jacques, with flaming eyes, "I know why you come here. 
You come to see what a poor life I lead; how Uttle is in 
my poor pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the pot ! 
There is half a pound of meat, one carrot and three onions ; 
that is all : go and tell the whole world that, if you like. 
Monsieur!" — A man of this sort was far gone. The 
whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes, for light 
laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these per-io 
versions and contortions of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to 
him they were not laughing or theatrical ; too real to him ! 
The contortions of a dying gladiator: the crowded amphi- 
theatre looks-on with entertainment; but the gladiator is 
in agonies and dying. 

And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passionate 
appeals to Mothers, with his Contrat-social, with his celebra- 
tions of Nature, even of savage life in Nature, did once 
more touch upon Reality, struggle towards Reality; was 
doing the function of a Prophet to his Time. As he could, 20 
and as the Time could ! Strangely through all that deface- 
ment, degradation and almost madness, there is in the 
inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly 
fire. Once more, out of the element of that withered mock- 
ing Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has 
arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge 
that this Life of ours is true; not a Scepticism, Theorem, 
or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had 
made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it 
out. He got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, then 30 
ill and dimly, — as clearly as he could. Nay what are all 
errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of rib- 
bons, aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we 
will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement 



202 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

and staggerings to and fro of a man sent on an errand he 
is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet find? Men are 
led by strange ways. One should have tolerance for a man, 
hope of him ; leave him to try yet what he will do. While 
life lasts, hope lasts for every man. 

Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated still 
among his countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, 
like himself, are what I call unhealthy; not the good sort 
of Books. There is a sensuality in Rousseau. Combined 

lowith such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a 
certain gorgeous attractiveness : but they are not genuinely 
poetical. Not white sunlight: something operatic; sl kind 
of rosepink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather 
it is universal, among the French since his time. Madame 
de Stael has something of it ; St. Pierre ; and down onwards 
to the present astonishing convulsionary ^Literature of 
Desperation,' it is everywhere abundant. That same rose- 
pink is not the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a 
Goethe, even at a Walter Scott ! He who has once seen into 

20 this, has seen the difference of the True from the Sham-True, 
and will discriminate them ever afterwards. 

We had to observe in Johnson how much good a Prophet, 
under all disadvantages and disorganisations, can accom- 
plish for the world. In Rousseau we are called to look 
rather at the fearful amount of evil which, under such dis- 
organisation, may accompany the good. Historically it is 
a most pregnant spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished 
into Paris garrets, in the gloomy company of his own 
Thoughts and Necessities there; driven from post to 

30 pillar ; fretted, exasperated till the heart of him went mad, 
he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not his friend 
nor the world's law. It was expedient, if anyway possible, 
that such a man should not have been set in flat hostility with 
the world. He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 203 

maniac, left to starve like a wild-beast in his cage ; — but he 
could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. The 
French Revolution found its Evangelist in Rousseau. His 
semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, 
the preferability of the savage to the civilised, and suchlike, 
helped well to produce a whole delirium in France generally. 
True, you may well ask. What could the world, the governors 
of the world, do with such a man ? Difficult to say what the 
governors of the world could do with him ! What he could 
do with them is unhappily clear enough, — guillotine a great 10 
many of them ! Enough now of Rousseau. 

It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, 
secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero starting 
up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, 
in the guise of a Robert Burns. Like a little well in the rocky 
desert places, — like a sudden splendour of Heaven in the 
artificial Vauxhall ! People knew not what to make of it. 
They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work ; alas, it let 
itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bit- 
terness of death, against that ! Perhaps no man had such a 20 
false reception from his fellow-men. Once more a very 
wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. 

The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. Surely 
we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place 
merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could 
be more perverse than Burns's. Among those secondhand 
acting-figures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, once more a giant Original Man ; one of those men who 
reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the 
Heroic among men : and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. 30 
The largest soul of all the British lands came among us in the 
shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. 

His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things ; did 



204 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

not succeed in any; was involved in continual difficulties. 
The Steward, Factor as the Scotch call him, used to send 
letters and threatenings. Burns says, ^ which threw us all 
into tears/ The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, 
his brave heroine of a wife ; and those children, of whom 
Robert was one ! In this Earth, so wide otherwise, no 
shelter for them. The letters ' threw us all into tears : ' figure 
it. The brave Father, I say always ; — a silent Hero and 
Poet; without whom the son had never been a speaking 

lo one ! Burns's Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, 
learnt what good society was; but declares that in no 
meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than at 
the hearth of this peasant. And his poor ^ seven acres 
of nursery-ground,' — not that, nor the miserable patch 
of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a 'living by, would 
prosper with him ; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. 
But he stood to it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquer- 
able man ; — swallowing-down how many sore sufferings 
daily into silence ; fighting like an unseen Hero, — nobody 

20 publishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness; 
voting pieces of plate to him ! However, he was not lost : 
nothing is lost. Robert is there ; the outcome of him, — 
and indeed of many generations of such as him. 

This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: unin- 
structed, poor, born only to hard manual toil ; and writing, 
when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only 
to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he 
written, even what he did write, in the general language 
of England, I doubt not he had already become universally 

30 recognised as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest 
men. That he should have tempted so many to penetrate 
through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that 
there lay something far from common within it. He has 
gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS ^05 

over all quarters of our wide Saxon world: wheresoever a 
Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be understood, by per- 
sonal inspection of this and the other, that one of the most 
considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth century was an 
Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, here 
too was a piece of the right Saxon stuflf : strong as the Harz- 
rock, rooted in the depths of the world ; — rock, yet with wells 
of living softness in it ! A wild impetuous whirlwind of 
passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly 
melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness ; 10 
homely, rustic, honest ; true simplicity of strength ; with its 
lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity ; — like the old Norse 
Thor, the Peasant-god ! — 

Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, 
has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their 
hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of 
infinite froUc, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter 
to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or suchlike, 
than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. 
This basis of mirth {'fond gaillard,^ as old Marquis Mira-20 
beau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, 
coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of 
the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund 
of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is 
not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside ; 
bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking 
' dew-drops from his mane ; ' as the swift-bounding horse, that 
laughs at the shaking of the spear. — But indeed, Hope, Mirth, 
of the sort like Burns^s, are they not the outcome properly of 
warm generous affection, — such as is the beginning of all 30 
to every man ? 

You would think it strange if I called Burns the most 
gifted British soul we had in all that century of his : and yet I 
believe the day is coming when there will be little danger in 



2o6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

saying so. His writings, all that he did under such obstruc- 
tions, are only a poor fragment of him. Professor Stewart 
remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good 
for much, that his poetry was not any particular faculty; 
but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind 
expressing itself in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in 
conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All 
kinds of gifts : from the gracef ulest utterances of courtesy, to 
the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, 

*rosoft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing 
insight ; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a 
man whose speech ' led them off their feet.' This is beautiful : 
but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has re- 
corded, which I have more than once alluded to. How the 
waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of bed, and come 
crowding to hear this man speak! Waiters and ostlers: — 
they too were men, and here was a man ! I have heard much 
about his speech; but one of the best things I ever heard 
of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar 

20 with him. That it was speech distinguished by always 
having something in it. '^He spoke rather little than much,'' 
this old man told me ; ^^sat rather silent in those early days, 
as in the company of persons above him ; and always when 
he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter." I 
know not why any one should ever speak otherwise ! — But 
if we look at his general force of soul, his healthy robustness 
everyway, the rugged downrightness, penetration, generous 
valour and manfulness that was in him, — where shall we 
readily find a better-gifted man ? 

30 Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I some- 
times feel as if Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau 
more than any other. They differ widely in vesture; yet 
look at them intrinsically. There is the same burly thick- 
necked strength of body as of soul ; — built, in both cases, 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 207 

on what the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, 
by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much 
more of bluster ; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the 
characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of 
true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is 
worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object 
or other: so do both these men speak. The same raging 
passions ; capable too in both of manifesting themselves as 
the tenderest noble affections. Wit, wild laughter, energy, 
directness, sincerity : these were in both. The types of the 10 
two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, 
debated in National Assemblies; politicised, as few could. 
Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of 
smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith ; in keeping silence 
over so much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate 
rage was possible : this might have bellowed forth Ushers de 
Breze and the like; and made itself visible to all men, in 
managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable 
epochs ! But they said to him reprovingly, his Official Su- 
periors said, and wrote: ^You are to work, not think.' Of 20 
your thinking-idiCvMy , the greatest in this land, we have no 
need; you are to gauge beer there; for that only are you 
wanted. Very notable ; — and worth mentioning, though 
we know what is to be said and answered ! As if Thought, 
Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all places and 
situations of the world, precisely the thing that was wanted. 
The fatal man, is he not always the uni\\mkmg man, the man 
who cannot think and see; but only grope, and hallucinate, 
and missee the nature of the thing he works with ? He mis- 
sees it, and mistakes it as we say ; takes it for one thing, and 30 
it is another thing, — and leaves him standing like a Futility 
there ! He is the fatal mxan ; unutterably fatal, put in the 
high places of men. — ^^Why complain of this?'' say some : 
^^ Strength is mournfully denied its arena ; that was true from 



208 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



of old." Doubtless ; and the worse for the arena, answer I ! 
Complaining profits little; stating of the truth may profit. 
That a Europe, with its French Revolution just breaking out, 
finds no need of a Burns except for gauging beer, — is a 
thing I, for one, cannot rejoice at ! — 

Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of 
Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his Poetry, so in his 
Life. The Song he sings is not of fantasticalities; it is of 
a thing felt, really there ; the prime merit of this, as of all 

lo in him, and of his Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns 
is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of 
savage sincerity, — not cruel, far from that ; but wild, wrest- 
ling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is 
something of the savage in all great men. 

Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns ? Well ; these Men of 
Letters too were not without a kind of Hero-worship: but 
what a strange condition has that got into now ! The wait- 
ers and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about the door, eager 
to catch any word that fell from Burns, were doing uncon- 

20 scious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for 
worshipper. Rousseau had worshippers enough; princes 
calling on him in his mean garret ; the great, the beautiful 
doing reverence to the poor moonstruck man. For himself 
a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life 
not to be brought into harmony. He sits at the tables of 
grandees; and has to copy music for his own living. He 
cannot even get his music copied. ^^By dint of dining out," 
says he, '^I run the risk of dying by starvation at home." 
For his worshippers too a most questionable thing ! If 

30 doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital well- 
being or illbeing to a generation, can we say that these genera- 
tions are very first-rate? — And yet our heroic Men of 
Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like 
to call them ; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any 



1 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 



209 



means whatever. The world has to obey him who thinks 
and sees in the world. The world can alter the manner of 
that ; can either have it as blessed continuous summer sun- 
shine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado, — with 
unspeakable difference of profit for the world ! The manner 
of it is very alterable ; the matter and fact of it is not alter- 
able by any power under the sky. Light; or, failing that, 
lightning : the world can take its choice. Not whether we 
call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him ; but 
whether we believe the word he tells us : there it all lies. If it 10 
be a true word, we shall have to believe it ; believing it, we shall 
have to do it. What name or welcome we give him or it, is a 
point that concerns ourselves mainly. It, the new Truth, 
new deeper revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily 
of the nature of a message from on high ; and must and will 
have itself obeyed. — 

My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's 
history, — his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me 
as if his demeanour there were the highest proof he gave of 
what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. If 20 
we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the 
strength of a man. So sudden ; all common Lionism, which 
ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is as if 
Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradually, but at 
once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La 
Fere. Burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no 
longer even a ploughman ; he is flying to the West Indies to 
escape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined peas- 
ant, his wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from 
him: next month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, 30 
handing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure 
of all eyes ! Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man ; 
but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hun- 
dred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in 



2IO HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

which Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could point 
out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. 
Tranquil, unastonished ; not abashed, not inflated, neither 
awkwardness nor affectation : he feels that he there is the 
man Robert Burns ; that the ' rank is but the guinea-stamp ; ' 
that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show what 
man, not in the least make him a better or other man ! Alas, 
it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a worse man ; a 
wretched inflated windbag, — inflated till he burst, and be- 

10 come a dead lion ; for whom, as some one has said, ' there is no 
resurrection of the body ; ' worse than a living dog ! — Burns 
is admirable here. 

And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion- 
hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It was they that 
rendered it impossible for him to live ! They gathered 
round him in his Farm ; hindered his industry ; no place 
was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lion- 
ism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He 
falls into discontents, into miseries, faults ; the world getting 

20 ever more desolate for him ; health, character, peace of mind 
all gone ; — solitary enough now. It is tragical to think of ! 
These men came but to see him ; it was out of no sympathy 
with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a little 
amusement : they got their amusement; — and the Hero's 
life went for it ! 

Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of 
'Light-chafers,' large Fire-flies, which people stick upon 
spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of 
condition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they 

30 much admire. Great honour to the Fire-flies. But — ! — 



LECTURE VI 

THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON I MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM 

[Friday, 2 2d May 1840.] 

We come now to the last form of Heroism ; that which we 
call Kingship. The Commander over Men ; he to whose will 
our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender 
themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reck- 
oned the most important of Great Men. He is practically 
the summary for us of all the various figures of Heroism ; 
Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity 
we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to 
command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teach- 
ing, to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do. He is 10 
called Rex, Regulator, Roi: our own name is still better; 
King, Konningj which means Can-ning, Able-man. 

Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, ques- 
tionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, present them- 
selves here : on the most of which we must resolutely for the 
present forbear to speak at all. As Burke said that perhaps 
fair Trial by Jury was the soul of Government, and that all 
legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the 
rest of it, went on, in order * to bring twelve impartial men into 
a jury-box ;' — so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, 20 
that the finding of your Ableman Sind getting him invested 
with the symbols of ability, with dignity, woTship{worth-ship), 
royalty, kinghood, or whatever we call it, so that he may 
actually have room to guide according to his faculty of doing 

211 



212 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 






it, — is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social 
procedure whatsoever in this world ! Hustings-speeches, 
Parliamentary motions. Reform Bills, French Revolutions, 
all mean at heart this ; or else nothing. Find in any country 
the Ablest Man that exists there ; raise him to the supreme 
place, and loyally reverence him : you have a perfect govern- 
ment for that country; no ballot-box, parHamentary elo- 
quence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery 
whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the perfect state ; 

lo an ideal country. The Ablest Man ; he means also the tru- 
est-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man : what he tells us to do 
must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere 
or anyhow learn ; — the thing which it will in all ways 
behove us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubt- 
ing, to do ! Our doing and life were then, so far as govern- 
ment could regulate it, well regulated ; that were the ideal of 
constitutions. 

Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be com- 
pletely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a very 

20 great way off; and we will right thankfully content our- 
selves with any not intolerable approximation thereto ! 
Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously ^measure by a 
scale of perfection the meagre product of reality' in this 
poor world of ours. We will esteem him no wise man ; we 
will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And 
yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that Ideals 
do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the 
whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds 
a wall perfectly perpendicular, mathematically this is not pos- 

30 sible ; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him ; and 
he, Hke a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job, 
leaves it so. And yet if he sway too much from the perpen- 
dicular; above all, if he throw plummet and level quite 
away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it 



THE HERO AS KING 213 

comes to hand! — Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. 
He has forgotten himself : but the Law of Gravitation does 
not forget to act on him ; he and his wall rush-down into 
confused welter of ruin ! — 

This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions, 
social explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put 
the too C/^able Man at the head of affairs ! The too ignoble, 
unvaliant, fatuous man. You have forgotten that there is 
any rule, or natural necessity whatever, of putting the Able 
Man there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. 10 
Unable Simulacrum of Ability, quack, in a word, must adjust 
himself with quack, in all manner of administration of hu- 
man things ; — which accordingly lie unadministered, fer- 
menting into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent mis- 
ery : in the outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable 
millions stretch-out the hand for their due supply, and it is 
not there. The ^aw of gravitation' acts; Nature's laws do 
none of them forget to act. The miserable millions burst- 
forth into Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness: 
bricks and bricklayer lie as a fatal chaos ! — 20 

Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, 
about the ^Divine right of Kings,' moulders unread now in the 
Public Libraries of this country. Far be it from us to disturb 
the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly from 
the earth, in those repositories ! At the same time, not to let 
the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some 
soul of it behind — I will say that it did mean something ; 
something true, which it is important for us and all men to 
keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you chose 
to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him) ; 30 
and clapt a round piece of metal on the head of, and called 
King, — there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so 
that he became a kind of god, and a Divinity inspired him with 
faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths : this, — what 



214 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in the Public 
Libraries ? But I will say withal, and that is what these 
Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human 
Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form 
among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else 
a Diabolic Wrong ; one or the other of these two ! For it is Si 
false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, 
that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this 
world ; and a God's-sanction,or else the violation of such, does 

lo look-out from all ruHng and obedience, from all moral acts 
of men. There is no act more moral between men than that 
of rule and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedience 
when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is! 
God's law is in that, I say, however the Parchment-laws may 
run : there is a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the 
heart of every claim that one man makes upon another. 

It can do none of us harm to reflect on this : in all the rela- 
tions of life it will concern us ; in Loyalty and Royalty, the 
highest of these. I esteem the modern error. That all goes 

20 by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy 
knaveries, and that, in short, there is nothing divine whatever 
in the association of men, a still more despicable error, natural 
as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a ^ divine right,' 
in people called Kings. I say. Find me the true Kdnning, 
King, or Able-man, and he has a divine right over me. That 
we knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that 
all men were ready to acknowledge his divine right when 
found: this is precisely the healing which a sick world is 
everywhere, in these ages, seeking after ! The true King, 

30 as guide of the practical, has ever something of the Pontiff 
in him, — guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has 
its rise. This too is a true saying. That the King is head 
of the Church. — But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a 
dead century to lie quiet on its bookshelves. 



THE HERO AS KING ^15 

Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your Able- 
man to seek^ and not knowing in what manner to proceed 
about it ! That is the world's sad predicament in these times 
of ours. They are times of revolution, and have long been. 
The bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plummet 
or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all 
welters as we see ! But the beginning of it was not the French 
Revolution ; that is rather the end, we can hope. It were 
truer to say, the beginning was three centuries farther back : 
in the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still 10 
called itself Christian Church had become a Falsehood, and 
brazenly went about pretending to pardon men's sins for 
metallic coined money, and to do much else which in the ever- 
lasting truth of Nature it did not now do : here lay the vital 
malady. The inward being wrong, all outward went ever 
more and more wrong. Belief died away; all was Doubt, 
Disbelief. The builder cast away his plummet ; said to him- 
self, ^^What is gravitation? Brick lies on brick there!" 
Alas, does it not still sound strange to many of us, the asser- 
tion that there is a God's-truth in the business of god-created 20 
men; that all is not a kind of grimace, an ^expediency,' 
diplomacy, one knows not what ! — 

From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, "You, 
self-styled Papa, you are no Father in God at all ; you are — a 
Chimera, whom I know not how to name in polite language ! " 
— from that onwards to the shout which rose round Camille 
Desmoulins in the Palais-Royal, '' Aux armesT^ when the 
people had burst-up against all manner of Chimeras, — I 
find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so fright- 
ful, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the voices© 
of awakened nations ; — starting confusedly, as out of night- 
mare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life 
was real; that God's-world was not an expediency and 
diplomacy ! Infernal ; — yes, since they would not have it 



2l6 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

otherwise. Infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial ! Hol- 
lowness, insincerity has to cease; sincerity of some sort has 
to begin. Cost what it may, reigns of terror, horrors of French 
Revolution or what else, we have to return to truth. Here is 
a Truth, as I said : a Truth clad in hellfire, since they would 
not but have it so ! — 

A common theory among considerable parties of men in 
England and elsewhere used to be, that the French Nation 
had, in those days, as it were gone mad; that the French 

I o Revolution was a general act of insanity, a temporary con- 
version of France and large sections of the world into a kind 
of Bedlam. The Event had risen and raged; but was a 
madness and nonentity, — gone now happily into the region 
of Dreams and the Picturesque ! — To such comfortable 
philosophers, the Three Days of July 1830 must have been 
a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French Nation risen 
again, in musketry and death-struggle, out shooting and 
being shot, to make that same mad French Revolution good ! 
The sons and grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist 

20 in the enterprise : they do not disown it ; they will have it 
made good ; will have themselves shot, if it be not made 
good ! To philosophers who had made-up their life-system 
on that ^madness' quietus, no phenomenon could be more 
alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say, the Prussian Professor 
and Historian, fell broken-hearted in consequence ; sickened, 
if we can believe it, and died of the Three Days ! It was 
surely not a very heroic death ; — httle better than Racine's, 
d3dng because Louis Fourteenth looked sternly on him once. 
The world had stood some considerable shocks, in its time ; 

30 might have been expected to survive the Three Days too, and 
be found turning on its axis after even them ! The Three 
Days told all mortals that the old French Revolution, mad as 
it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of Bedlam, but a 
genuine product of this Earth where we all live ; that it was 



THE HERO AS KING 21 7 

verily a Fact, and that the worid in general would do well 
everywhere to regard it as such. 

Truly, without the French Revolution, one would not 
know what to make of an age like this at all. We will hail 
the French Revolution, as shipwrecked mariners might the 
sternest rock, in a world otherwise all of baseless sea and 
waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this 
false withered artificial time ; testifying once more that Na- 
ture is preternsLtural ; if not divine, then diabolic; that 
Semblance is not Reality ; that it has to become Reality, or 10 
the world will take-fire under it, — burn it into what it is, 
namely Nothing ! Plausibility has ended ; empty Routine 
has ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trump of 
Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest 
who will learn it soonest. Long confused generations before 
it be learned ; peace impossible till it be ! The earnest man, 
surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await 
patiently, patiently strive to do his work, in the midst of that. 
Sentence of Death is written down in Heaven against all that ; 
sentence of Death is now proclaimed on the Earth against it : 20 
this he with his eyes may see. And surely, I should say, con- 
sidering the other side of the matter, what enormous diffi- 
culties lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, 
the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on, — 
he may easily find other work to do than labouring in the 
Sansculottic province at this time of day ! 

To me, in these circumstances, that of ^Hero-worship' 
becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing 
fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlast- 
ing hope in it for the management of the world. Had all 30 
traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever 
instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of 
Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to rever- 
ence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through 



2i8 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing 
and conflagration. 

Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those 
workers and fighters in the French Revolution. Not rever- 
ence for Great Men ; not any hope or belief, or even wish, 
that Great Men could again appear in the world ! Nature, 
turned into a ^Machine,' was as if effete now ; could not any 
longer produce Great Men : — I can tell her, she may give-up 
the trade altogether, then; we cannot do without Great 

lo Men ! — But neither have I any quarrel with that of ^Liberty 
and Equality;' with the faith that, wise great men being 
impossible, a level immensity of foolish small men would 
suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty 
and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero- 
worship, reverence for such Authorities, has proved false, is 
itself a falsehood ; no more of it ! We have had such forger- 
ies, we will now trust nothing. So many base plated coins 
passing in the market, the belief has now become common 
that no gold any longer exists, — and even that we can do 

20 very well without gold ! '' I find this, among other things, in 
that universal cry of Liberty and Equality ; and find it very 
natural, as matters then stood. 

And yet surely it is but the transition from false to true. 
Considered as the whole truth, it is false altogether ; — the 
product of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only strug- 
gling to see. Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere : 
not Loyalty alone ; it extends from divine adoration down 
to the lowest practical regions of life. ^Bending before men,* 
if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with 

30 than practised, is Hero-worship, — a recognition that there 
does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine ; 
that every created man, as Novalis said, is a 'revelation in the 
Flesh.' They were Poets too, that devised all those graceful 
courtesies which make life noble ! Courtesy is not a falsehood 



THE HERO AS KING 219 

or grimace; it need not be such. And Loyalty, religious 
Worship itself, are still possible ; nay still inevitable. 

May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late 
Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that never- 
theless every Great Man, every genuine man, is by the nature 
of him a son of Order, not of Disorder ? It is a tragical posi- 
tion for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an 
anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does 
encumber him at every step, — him to whose whole soul 
anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order; every 10 
man's is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, 
into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. 
Is not all work of man in this world a making of Order? The 
carpenter finds rough trees; shapes them, constrains them 
into square fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born 
enemies of Disorder : it is tragical for us all to be concerned 
in image-breaking and down-pulling; for the Great Man, 
more a man than we, it is doubly tragical. 

Thus too all human things, maddest French Sansculot- 
tisms, do and must work towards Order. I say, there is not 20 
a man in them, raging in the thickest of the madness, but is 
impelled withal, at all moments, towards Order. His very 
life means that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No chaos 
but it seeks a centre to revolve round. While man is man, 
some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sans- 
culottism. — Curious : in those days when Hero-worship 
was the most incredible thing to every one, how it does 
come-out nevertheless, and assert itself practically, in a way 
which all have to credit. Divine right, take it on the great 
scale, is found to mean divine might withal ! While old false 30 
Formulas are getting trampled everywhere into destruction, 
new genuine Substances unexpectedly unfold themselves 
indestructible. In rebellious ages, when Kingship itself 
seems dead and abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step-forth 



220 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

again as Kings. The history of these men is what we have 
now to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. The old ages 
are brought back to us; the manner in which Kings were 
made, and Kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited 
in the history of these Two. 

We have had many civil-wars in England; wars of Red 
and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort ; wars enough, 
which are not very memorable. But that war of the Puri- 
tans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. 

lo Trusting to your candour, which will suggest on the other side 
what I have not room to say, I will call it a section once more 
of that great universal war which alone makes-up the true 
History of the World, — the war of Belief against UnbeUef ! 
The struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, 
against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. 
The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage Iconoclasts, fierce 
destroyers of Forms ; but it were more just to call them hat- 
ers of untrue Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud 
and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me to 

20 have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest ; an unfortunate 
Pedant rather than anything worse. His ^ Dreams ' and super- 
stitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable 
kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole 
world is forms. College-rules ; whose notion is that these are 
the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with 
that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head not of a 
College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep- 
reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by 
the old decent regulations ; nay that their salvation will lie 

30 in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he 
drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose; 
cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry 
of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Col- 



THE HERO AS KING 221 

legians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill- 
starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was 
a College of that kind, and the world was not that. Alas, 
was not his doom stern enough ? Whatever wrongs he did, 
were they not all frightfully avenged on him ? 

It is meritorious to insist on forms ; Religion and all else 
naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed 
world is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness 
of Puritanism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it 
is the thing I pity, — praising only the spirit which had lo 
rendered that inevitable ! All substances clothe themselves 
in forms : but there are suitable true forms, and then there 
are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might 
say. Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly under- 
stand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of 
it, will be true, good ; forms which are consciously put round 
a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It dis- 
tinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, earnest 
solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things. 

There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. 20 
In the commonest meeting of men, a person making, what 
we call ^set speeches,' is not he an offence? In the mere 
drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces, 
prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you 
wish to get away from. But suppose now it were some 
matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as 
Divine Worship is), about which your whole soul, struck 
dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself 
into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any 
utterance there possible, — what should we say of a man 30 
coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way 
of upholsterer-mummery ? Such a man, — let him depart 
swiftly, if he love himself ! You have lost your only son ; 
are mute, struck down, without even tears : an importunate 



222 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



^ 



man importunately oflFers to celebrate Funeral Games for 
him in the manner of the Greeks 1 Such mummery is not 
only not to be accepted, — it is hateful, unendurable. It is 
what the old Prophets called 'Idolatry,' worshipping of 
hollow shows; what all earnest men do and will reject. We 
can partly understand what those poor Puritans meant. 
Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church, in the 
manner we have it described ; with his multipUed ceremonial 
bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely it is rather 

lothe rigorous formal Pedant, intent on his 'College-rules,' 
than the earnest Prophet, intent on the essence of the 
matter ! 

Puritanism found such forms insupportable ; trampled on 
such forms ; — we have to excuse it for saying. No form at 
all rather than such ! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, 
with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching 
from his earnest soul into the earnest souls of men: is not 
this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever ? The 
nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any sem- 

2oblance, however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with 
due semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; 
actually no fear at all. Given the living man, there will be 
found clothes for him; he will find himself clothes. But 
the suit-of-clothes pretending that it is both clothes and man 
— ! — We cannot 'fight the French' by three-hundred- 
thousand red uniforms ; there must be men in the inside of 
them! Semblance, I assert, must actually not divorce itself 
from Reality. If Semblance do, — why then there must be 
men found to rebel against Semblance, for it has become a 

30 lie ! These two Antagonisms at war here, in the case of Laud 
and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They went 
to fierce battle over England in that age ; and f ought-out their 
confused controversy to a certain length, with many results 
for all of us. 



THE HERO AS KING 223 

In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, 
their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice 
done them. Charles Second and his Rochesters were not the 
kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or mean- 
ing of such men might have been. That there could be any 
faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor 
Rochesters, and the age they ushered-in, had forgotten. 
Puritanism was hung on gibbets, — like the bones of the 
leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on accomplish- 
ing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of it on 10 
what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We 
have our Habeas-Corpus, our free Representation of the 
People; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that all men 
are, or else must, shall, and will become, what we call free 
men ; — men with their life grounded on reality and justice, 
not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera ! 
This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the 
Puritans. 

And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, 
the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their 20 
memories were, one after another, taken down from the gib- 
bet ; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, 
as good as canonised. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, 
Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of 
Heroes; political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small 
degree we owe what makes us a free England : it would not 
be safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. 
Few Puritans of note but find their apologists somewhere, 
and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One 
Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, 30 
seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist 
anywhere. Him neither saint nor sinner will acquit of great 
wickedness. A man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and 
so forth: but he betrayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, 



224 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartufe; 
turning all that noble struggle for constitutional Liberty into 
a sorry farce played for his own benefit : this and worse is 
the character they give of Cromwell. And then there come 
contrasts with Washington and others ; above all, with these 
noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for 
himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. 

This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural 
product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said of the 

lo Valet, so of the Sceptic : He does not know a Hero when he 
sees him ! . The Valet expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, 
body guards and flourishes of trumpets : the Sceptic of the 
Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, 
'Principles,' or what else he may call them ; a style of speech 
and conduct which has got to seem ^respectable,' which can 
plead for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the 
suffrages of an enlightened sceptical Eighteenth century ! 
It is, at bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and he 
expect : the garnitures of some acknowledged royalty, which 

20 then they will acknowledge ! The King coming to them in the 
rugged 2^;zformulistic state shall be no King. 

For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate 
a word of disparagement against such characters as Hamp- 
den, Eliot, Pym ; whom I believe to have been right worthy 
and useful men. I have read diligently what books and 
documents about them I could come at ; — with the honest- 
est wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; 
but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with 
very indifferent success ! At bottom, I found that it would 

30 not do. They are very noble men, these; step along in 
their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philos- 
ophies, parliamentary eloquences. Ship-moneys, Monarchies 
of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of 
men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy 



THE HERO AS KING 22$ 

alone endeavours to get-up some worship of them. What 
man's heart does, in reality, break-forth into any fire of 
brotherly love for these men ? They are become dreadfully 
dull men ! One breaks-down often enough in the constitu- 
tional eloquence of the admirable Pym with his ^seventhly 
and lastly/ You find that it may be the admirablest thing 
in the world, but that it is heavy, — heavy as lead, barren as 
brick-clay ; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing 
now surviving there ! One leaves all these Nobilities stand- 
ing in their niches of honour : the rugged outcast Cromwell, lo 
he is the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. 
The great savage Baresark: he could write no euphemistic 
Monarchy of Man; did not speak, did not work with glib 
regularity ; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. 
But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail ; 
he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the 
naked truth of things ! That, after all, is the sort of man for 
one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other 
sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one 
finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man 20 
for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work 
but with gloves on ! 

Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance 
of the Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans 
seem to be a very great matter. One might say, it is but 
a piece of Formulism and Scepticism, like the rest. They 
tell us, It was a sorrowful thing to consider that the founda- 
tion of our English Liberties should have been laid by 'Super- 
stition.' These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic 
incredible Creeds, Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions ; 30 
demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to 
worship in their own way. Liberty to tax themselves: 
that was the thing they should have demanded ! It was 
Superstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful ignorance of Con- 



226 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

stitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing ! — Liberty 
to tax oneself? Not to pay-out money from your pocket 
except on reason shown ? No century, I think, but a rather 
barren one would have fixed on that as the first right of man ! 
I should say,on the contrary, A just man will generally have 
better cause than money in what shape soever, before deciding 
to revolt against his Government. Ours is a most confused 
world; in which a good man will be thankful to see any 
kind of Government maintain itself in a not insupportable 

lo manner : and here in England, to this hour, if he is not ready 
to pay a great many taxes which he can see very small reason 
in, it will not go well with him, I think ! He must try some 
other climate than this. Taxgatherer? Money? He will 
say: "Take my money, since you can, and it is so desirable 
to you ; take it, — and take yourself away with it ; and leave 
me alone to my work here. / am still here ; can still work, 
after all the money you have taken from me !" But if they 
come to him, and say, "Acknowledge a Lie; pretend to say 
you are worshipping God, when you are not doing it : believe 

20 not the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, or 
pretend to find true!'' He will answer: "No; by God's 
help, no ! You may take my purse ; but I cannot have my 
moral Self annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's 
who might meet me with a loaded pistol : but the Self is mine 
and God my Maker's ; it is not yours ; and I will resist you 
to the death, and revolt against you, and, on the whole, 
front all manner of extremities, accusations and confusions 
in defence of that ! " 

Really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify 

30 revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all 
just revolts among men. Not Hunger alone produced even 
the French Revolution; no, but the feeling of the insup- 
portable all-pervading Falsehood which had now embodied 
itself in Hunger, in universal material Scarcity and Non- 



THE HERO AS KING 227 

entity, and thereby become indisputably false in the eyes 
of all ! We will leave the Eighteenth century with its lib- 
erty to tax itself.' We will not astonish ourselves that the 
meaning of such men as the Puritans remained dim to it. To 
men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a real human 
soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the Voice of this 
world's Maker still speaking to us, — be intelligible ? What 
it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines relating to 
'taxing,' or other the like material interest, gross, palpable 
to the sense, such a century will needs reject as an amorphous 10 
heap of rubbish. Hampdens, Pyms and Ship-money will be 
the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be 
fervid ; — which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as ice 
does: and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic 
mass of 'madness,' 'hypocrisy,' and much else. 

From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's 
falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe 
the like, of any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great 
Men figure in History as false selfish men; but if we will 
consider it, they are hut figures for us, unintelligible shadows ; 20 
we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. 
A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but 
for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such 
notions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without 
a conscience in it, the essence of all real souls, great or small ? 
— No, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity ; 
the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less. 
Why should we ? There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange 
that, after all the mountains of calumny this man has been 
subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars, 30 
who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some 
cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been 
one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A prince of 
liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I could yet 



228 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



get sight of. It is like Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your 
proof of Mahomet's Pigeon ? No proof ! — Let us leave all 
these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. 
They are not portraits of the man ; they are distracted phan- 
tasms of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. 

Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to 
me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little 
we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come 
down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, 

lo sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic tempera- 
ment indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of 
those stories of ^Spectres'; of the white Spectre in broad 
daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, 
we are not bound to believe much ; — probably no more than 
of the other black Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the 
Officer saw him sell himself before Worcester Fight ! But 
the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humour of 
Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. 
The Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, 

20 He had often been sent for at midnight ; Mr. Cromwell was 
full of hypochondria, thought himself near dying, and "had 
fancies about the Town-cross." These things are significant. 
Such an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stub- 
born strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it 
is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood ! 

The young Oliver is sent to study Law ; falls, or is said to 
have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of 
youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not 
much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether 

30 grave and quiet man. ^He pays-back what money he had 
won at gambling,' says the story; — he does not think any 
gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, 
very natural, this ^conversion,' as they well name it; this 
awakening of a great true soul from the wordly slough, to 




THE HERO AS KING 229 

see into the awful truth of things ; — to see that Time and its 
shows all rested on Eternity, and this poor earth of ours was 
the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell ! OHver's life at 
St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not alto- 
gether as that of a true and devout man ? He has renounced 
the world and its ways ; its prizes are not the thing that can 
enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily 
assembles his servants round him to worship God. He com- 
forts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers ; nay can him- 
self preach, — exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem 10 
the time. In all this what ^hypocrisy,' 'ambition,' 'cant,' 
or other falsity ? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed 
on the other Higher World ; his aim to get well thither, by 
walking well through his humble course in this world. He 
courts no notice : what could notice here do for him ? ' Ever 
in his great Taskmaster's eye.' 

It is striking, too, how he comes-out once into pubHc 
view; he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance 
to a public grievance. I mean, in that matter of the Bed- 
ford Fens. No one else will go to law with Authority ; 20 
therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns back 
into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. ' Gain influence ' ? 
His influence is the most legitimate ; derived from personal 
knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable and deter- 
mined man. In this way he has lived til! past forty; old 
age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death 
and Eternity ; it was at this point that he suddenly became 
' ambitious ' ! I do not interpret his Parliamentary mission 
in that way ! 

His successes in Parliament, his successes through the 30 
war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more 
resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of 
him than other men. His prayers to God; his spoken 
thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, 



230 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



Lsh ■ 

I 



and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash 
of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking 
envelopments at Dunbar; through the death-hail of so 
many battles; mercy after mercy; to the ^crowning mercy' 
of Worcester Fight : all this is good and genuine for a deep- 
hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbeheving 
CavaUers, worshipping not God but their own 'lovelocks,' 
frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from contem- 
plations of God, living without God in the world, need it 

10 seem hypocritical. 

Nor will his participation in the King's death involve 
him in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing 
of a King! But if you once go to war with him, it lies 
there; this and all else lies there. Once at war, you have 
made wager of battle with him : it is he to die, or else you. 
Reconciliation is problematic ; may be possible, or, far more 
likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted 
that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, 
had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. 

20 The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the 
Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed 
as for their own existence ; but it could not be. The unhappy 
Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows 
himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A 
man who, once for all, could not and would not understand: 
— whose thought did not in any measure represent to him 
the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose word did not 
at all represent his thought. We may say this of him with- 
out cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeni- 

30 able. Forsaken there of all but the name of Kingship, he 
still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, 
fancied that he might play-off party against party, and 
smuggle himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, 
they both discovered that he was deceiving them. A man 



THE HERO AS KING 23 1 

whose word will not inform you at all what he means or will 
do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get 
out of that man's way, or put him out of yours ! The Presby- 
terians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, 
though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so 
Cromwell: "For all our fighting,'' says he, "we are to have 
a little bit of paper ? " No ! — 

In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical 
eye of this man; how he drives towards the practical and 
practicable ; has a genuine insight into what is fact. Such 10 
an intellect, I maintain, does not belong to a false man: 
the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediencies: 
the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. 
Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in 
the contest. How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, 
flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose 
heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them : this is advice 
by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into Fact ! 
Cromwell's Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight 
of his ; men fearing God ; and without any other fear. No 20 
more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil 
of England, or of any other land. 

Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to 
them; which was so blamed: "If the King should meet me 
in battle, I would kill the King." Why not? These words 
were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than 
Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. 
The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting 
'for the King ; ' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. 
To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek oflBciahty ; it is sheer 30 
rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling- 
forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with 
man in fire-eyed rage, — the infernal element in man called 
forth, to try it by that ! Do that therefore ; since that is the 




232 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP. 

thing to be done. — The successes of Cromwell seem to me^ 
very natural thing ! Since he was not shot in battle, they 
were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye 
to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to 
post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer 
became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknow- 
ledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King of Eng- 
land, requires no magic to explain it ! — 

Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall 

10 into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know 
a Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all 
worlds, what curse is so fatal? The heart lying dead, the 
eye cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the vul- 
pine intellect. That a true King be sent them is of small use ; 
they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, 
Is this your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in 
bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can accom- 
plish little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life, 
which is much, which is all ; but for the world he accomplishes 

20 comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct 
from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: 
in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is scouted as a coun- 
terfeit. The vulpine intellect ^detects' him. For being a 
man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your 
Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he 
was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneer- 
ingly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry 
plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea. 
Lamentable this ! I say, this must be remedied. Till 

30 this be remedied in some measure, there is nothing reme- 
died. ^Detect quacks'? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but 
know withal the men that are to be trusted ! Till we know 
that, what is all our knowledge ; how shall we even so much 
as ^detect'? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers 



THE HERO AS KING 233 

itself to be knowledge, and 'detects' in that fashion, is far . 
mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, 
there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue 
terror of being duped. The world does exist; the world 
has truth in it, or it would not exist ! First recognise what 
is true, we shall then discern what is false; and properly 
never till then. 

'Know the men that are to be trusted:' alas, this is yet, 
in these days, very far from us. The sincere alone can recog- 
nise sincerity. Not a Hero only is needed, but a world fit 10 
for him ; a world not of Valets; — the Hero comes almost in 
vain to it otherwise ! Yes, it is far from us : but it must 
come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, 
what have we ? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions : 
— if we are as Valets, and do not know the Hero when we 
see him, what good are all these ? A heroic Cromwell comes ; 
and for a hundred-and-fifty years he cannot have a vote from 
us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is the natural 
property of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and 
quackeries ! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible 20 
there. By ballot-boxes we alter the figure of our Quack ; 
but the substance of him continues. The Valet- World has to 
be governed by the Sham-Hero, by the King merely dressed in 
King-gear. It is his ; he is its ! In brief, one of two things : 
We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and 
Captain, somewhat better, when we see him ; or else go on to 
be forever governed by the Unheroic ; — had we ballot-boxes 
clattering at every street-corner, there were no remedy in these. 

Poor Cromwell, — great Cromwell! The inarticulate 
Prophet; Prophet who could not speak. Rude, confused, 30 
struggling to utter himself, with his savage depth, with 
his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the 
elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chill- 
ingworths, diplomatic Clarendons ! Consider him. An 



234 



HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous 
dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear deter- 
minate man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind 
of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, work- 
ing in such an element of boundless h5rpochondria, un- 
formed black of darkness ! And yet withal this hypochon- 
dria, what was it but the very greatness of the man ? The 
depth and tenderness of his wild affections : the quantity 
of sympathy he had with things, — the quantity of insight he 

lo would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he would 
yet get over things : this was his hypochondria. The man's 
misery, as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. 
Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, 
half-distracted; the wide element of mournful black envel- 
oping him, — wide as the world. It is the character of 
a prophetic man ; a man with his whole soul seeing, and 
struggling to see. 

On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed 
confusion of speech. To himself the internal meaning was 

20 sun-clear ; but the material with which he was to clothe it in 
utterance was not there. He had lived silent; a great un- 
named sea of Thought round him all his days; and in his 
way of Hfe little call to attempt naming or uttering that. 
With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, 
I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, 
and speak fluently enough ; — he did harder things than writ- 
ing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit 
for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. In- 
tellect is not speaking and logicising ; it is seeing and ascer- 

3otaining. Virtue, Vir-tus, manhood, hero-hoodi, is not fair- 
spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of all, what the 
Germans well name it, Tugend {Taugend, dow-mg or Dough- 
tiness), Courage and the Faculty to do. This basis of the 
matter Cromwell had in him. 



% 



THE HERO AS KING 23$ 

One understands moreover how, though he could not 
speak in Parliament, he might preach, rhapsodic preaching ; 
above all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. 
These are the free outpouring utterances of what is in the 
heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, 
sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer 
is a notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were 
commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking 
difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, and pray 
alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution 10 
rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they would name 
it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent 
prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to 
make His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of 
Christ, as they felt themselves to be ; a little band of Chris- 
tian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black 
devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish, 
— they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, 
not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which now 
rose upon them, — how could a human soul, by any means 20 
at all, get better light ? Was not the purpose so formed Kke 
to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed with- 
out hesitation any more ? To them it was as the shining of 
Heaven's own Splendour in the waste-howling darkness; 
the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their 
desolate perilous way. Was it not such ? Can a man's soul, 
to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsi- 
cally by that same, — devout prostration of the earnest strug- 
ghng soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be 
such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticu- 30 
late one ? There is no other method. ' Hypocrisy ' ? One 
begins to weary of all that. They who call it so, have no 
right to speak on such matters. They never formed a pur- 
pose, what one can call a purpose. They went about balanc- 



236 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

ing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; 
they never were alone with the truth of a thing at all. — 
Cromweirs prayers were Ukely to be ^eloquent,' and much 
more than that. His was the heart of a man who could pray. 
But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not 
nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he 
was, what all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, 
even in Parliament; one who, from the first, had weight. 
With that rude passionate voice of his, he was always un- 

10 derstood to mean something, and men wished to know what. 
He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; 
spoke always without premeditation of the words he was to 
use. The Reporters, too, in those days seem to have been 
singularly -candid ; and to have given the Printer precisely 
what they found on their own note-paper. And withal, 
what a strange proof is it of CromwelFs being the premedi- 
tative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the 
world, That to the last he took no more charge of his 
Speeches ! How came he not to study his words a little, 

20 before flinging them out to the public? If the words were 
true words, they could be left to shift for themselves. 

But with regard to CromwelFs ^ lying,' we will make one 
remark. This, I suppose, or something hke this, to have 
been the nature of it. All parties found themselves de- 
ceived in him; each party understood him to be meaning 
this, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to have 
been meaning that! He was, cry they, the chief of Hars. 
But now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, 
not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior 

30 man ? Such a man must have reticences in him. If he walk 
wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his 
journey will not extend far ! There is no use for any man's 
taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always 
is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will 



( 



THE HERO AS KING 237 

show to other men ; even to those he would have work along 
with him. There are impertinent inquiries made: your 
rule is, to leave the inquirer wmnformed on that matter; 
not, if you can help it, wmnformed, but precisely as dark 
as he was ! This, could one hit the right phrase of response, 
is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in 
such a case. 

Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of 
small subaltern parties ; uttered to them a part of his mind. 
Each little party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, 10 
one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own 
party ! Was it his blame ? At all seasons of his history he 
must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to 
them the deeper insight he had, they must either have 
shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little com- 
pact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They 
could not have worked in his province any more ; nay per- 
haps they could not now have worked in their own province. 
It is the inevitable position of a great man among small 
men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen every- 20 
where, whose whole activity depends on some conviction 
which to you is palpably a limited one ; imperfect, what we 
call an error. But would it be a kindness always, is it a 
duty always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a 
man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on some 
thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to 
you incredible : break that beneath him, he sinks to endless 
depths ! "I might have my hand full of truth," said Fon- 
tenelle, "and open only my little finger.'' 

And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how 30 
much more in all departments of practice ! He that cannot 
withal keep his mind to himself cannot practise any consid- 
erable thing whatever. And we call it 'dissimulation,' all 
this? What would you think of caUing the general of an 



238 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal 
and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what 
his thoughts were about everything ? — Cromwell, I should 
rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire 
for its perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning 
'corporals' rolled confusedly round him through his whole 
course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a 
great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one 
proved falsehood, as I said ; not one ! Of what man that 
10 ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you 
say so much ? — 

But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which 
pervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such 
men as Cromwell; about their ^ambition,' 'falsity,' and 
suchlike. The first is what I might call substituting the 
goal of their career for the course and starting-point of it. 
The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had 
determined on being Protector of England, at the time 
when he was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. 

20 His career lay all mapped-out : a program of the whole drama ; 
which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all 
manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on, 
— the hollow, scheming 'YnoKpLry^j or Play-actor, that he 
was ! This is a radical perversion ; all but universal in such 
cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is ! 
How much does one of us foresee of his own life ? Short way 
ahead of us it is all dim ; an w;^wound skein of possibilities, 
of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This 
Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, 

30 which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of 
his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene ! Not so. 
We see it so ; but to him it was in no measure so. What 
absurdities would fall-away of themselves, were this one 



THE HERO AS KING 239 

undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History ! His- 
torians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view ; — 
but look whether such is practically the fact ! Vulgar His- 
tory, as in this CromwelFs case, omits it altogether ; even the 
best kinds of History only remember it now and then. To 
remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it 
stood J requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impossible. 
A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than Shakspeare; 
who could enact a brother man's biography, see with the 
brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things 10 
he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few ^Histo- 
rians' are Uke to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied 
perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will dis- 
appear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so ; 
in sequence, as they were; not in the lump, as they are 
thrown-down before us. 

But a second error, which I think the generahty commit, 
refers to this same ^ambition' itself. We exaggerate the 
ambition of Great Men ; we mistake what the nature of it 
is. Great Men are not ambitious in that sense ; he is a 20 
small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man 
who lives in misery because he does not shine above other 
men ; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious 
about his gifts and claims ; struggling to force everybody, 
as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge 
him a great man, and set him over the heads of men ! Such 
a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this 
sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man, 
fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among 
men. I advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot 30 
walk on quiet paths ; unless you will look at him, wonder at 
him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is 
the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there 
is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would 



240 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



1 



find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great 
man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and 
real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much 
tormented in this way. 

Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be ^noticed' 
by noisy crowds of people ? God his Maker already noticed 
him. He, Cromwell, was already there ; no notice would make 
him other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray ; 
and Life from the downhill slope was all seen to be limited, 

lonot infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter how it 
went, — he had been content to plough the ground, and 
read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any 
longer, without selKng himself to Falsehood, that he might 
ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with 
bundles of papers haunting him, ^^ Decide this, decide that,^' 
which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide ! 
What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old, 
was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a 
splendour as of Heaven itself ? His existence there as man set 

20 him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment and Eter- 
nity : these already lay as the background of whatsoever he 
thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless 
Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God's 
Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it : this 
was great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man 

* ambitious,' to figure him as the prurient windbag described 
above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will 
say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep 
your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important 

30 businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is too 
much of life in me already!" Old Samuel Johnson, the 
greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious. 

* Corsica Boswell' flaunted at public shows with printed 
ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at 



THE HERO AS KING 241 

home. The world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in 
its sorrows ; — what could paradings, and ribbons in the 
hat, do for it ? 

Ah yes, I will say again : The great silent men ! Looking 
round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little 
meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the 
great Empire of Silence, The noble silent men, scattered 
here and there, each in his department; silently thinking, 
silently working ; whom no Morning Newspaper makes men- 
tion of ! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that 10 
has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest 
which had no roots; which had all turned into leaves and 
boughs ; — which must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for 
us if we had nothing but what we can show, or speak. Silence, 
the great Empire of Silence : higher than the stars ; deeper 
than the Kingdoms of Death ! It alone is great ; all else is 
small. — I hope we English will long maintain our grand 
talent pour le silence. Let others that cannot do without 
standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the 
market-place, cultivate speech exclusively, — become a most 20 
green forest without roots ! Solomon says, There is a time to 
speak ; but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent 
Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he 
was, by want of money, and nothing other, one might ask, 
"Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your 
system, found your sect?'' "Truly," he will answer, "I 
am continent of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet 
had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough 
to speak it. My * system' is not for promulgation first of 
all; it is for serving myself to hve by. That is the great 30 
purpose of it to me. And then the ^honour' ? Alas, yes ; — 
but as Cato said of the statue : So many statues in that Forum 
of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's 
statue?" 



242 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



1 



But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let 
me say that there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly 
blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has 
provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent 
too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it be 
accounted altogether poor and miserable. ^Seekest thou 
great things, seek them not : ' this is most true. And yet, 
I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to 
develop himself according to the magnitude which Nature 

lo has made him of ; to speak-out, to act-out, what Nature 
has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay, it is 
a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The 
meaning of Hfe here on earth might be defined as consist- 
ing in this: To unfold your self, to work what thing you 
have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, 
the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks 
that the infant learns to speak by this necessity it feels. — 
We will say therefore : To decide about ambition, whether 
it is bad or not, you have two things to take into view. 

20 Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness of the 
man for the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps 
the place was his; perhaps he had a natural right, and even 
obligation, to seek the place ! Mirabeau's am-bition to 
be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were 'the 
only man in France that could have done any good there ? ' 
Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly felt how much good 
he could do ! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, 
and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken- 
hearted because they had flung him out, and he was now quit 

30 of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him. — Nature, I say, 
has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to 
speak withal ; too amply, rather ! 

Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old 
Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was 



THE HERO AS KING 243 

possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country 
and the whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law 
might be made Law on this Earth ; that the prayer he prayed 
daily, ^Thy kingdom come/ was at length to be fulfilled ! If 
you had convinced his judgment of this ; that it was possible, 
practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called 
to take a part in it ! Would not the whole soul of the man 
have flamed-up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance 
and determination to act ; casting all sorrows and misgivings 
under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small, 10 
— the whole dark element of his existence blazing into artic- 
ulate radiance of light and lightning ? It were a true ambi- 
tion this ! And think now how it actually was with Crom- 
well. From of old, the sufferings of God's Church, true 
zealous Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, 
set on pillories, their ears cropt-off, God's Gospel-cause 
trodden under foot of the unworthy : all this had lain heavy 
on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it, in silence, 
in prayer ; seeing no remedy on Earth ; trusting well that a 
remedy in Heaven's goodness would come, — that such a 20 
course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And 
now behold the dawn of it ; after twelve years silent waiting, 
all England stirs itself ; there is to be once more a Parliament, 
the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well- 
grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was not 
such a Parliament worth being a member of? Cromwell 
threw down his ploughs, and hastened thither. 

He spoke there, — rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self- 
seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked 
there ; he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, 30 
through cannon-tumult and all else, — on and on, till the 
Cause triumphed, its once so formidable enemies all swept 
from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light 
of victory and certainty. That he stood there as the strongest 



244 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England, — what 
of this? It was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel 
could now estabUsh itself in the world ! The Theocracy which 
John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a * devout imagina- 
tion,' this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of 
most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being 
realised. Those that were highest in Christ's Church, the 
devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land : in some consid- 
erable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not 

lo true, God's truth ? And if true, was it not then the very thing 
to do ? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to 
answer, Yes ! This I call a noble true purpose ; is it not, in its 
own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of 
Statesman or man ? For a Knox to take it up was something ; 
but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience 
of what our world was, — History, I think, shows it only this 
once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point of 
Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that ^ Faith in the 
Bible' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it : that 

20 it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the 
Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had 
longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all 
lands, an attainable fact ! 

Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness, 
its alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems 
to me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such 
Statesman in England ; one man, that I can get sight of, 
who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. 
One man, in the course of fifteen-hundred years; and this 

30 was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the 
ten; opponents by the million. Had England rallied all 
round him, — why, then, England might have been a Chris- 
Han land ! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hope- 
less problem, ' Given a world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty 



THE HERO AS KING 245 

from their united action ' ; — how cumbrous a problem, you 
may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places ! 
Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's 
great grace, the matter begins to stagnate ; and this problem 
is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one. — 

But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume, 
and a multitude following him, come upon me here with an 
admission that Cromwell was sincere at first; a sincere 
'Fanatic' at first, but gradually became a * Hypocrite' as 
things opened round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite 10 
is Hume's theory of it ; extensively applied since, — to 
Mahomet and many others. Think of it seriously, you will 
find something in it; not much, not all, very far from all. 
Sincere hero hearts do not sink in this miserable manner. 
The Sun flings-forth impurities, gets balefully incrusted with 
spots ; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun at 
all, but a mass of Darkness ! I will venture to say that such 
never befell a great deep Cromwell; I think, never. Na- 
ture's own lion-hearted Son ; Antaeus-like, his strength is got 
by touching the Earth, his Mother ; lift him up from the Earth, 20 
lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We 
will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate man ; that 
he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. He was 
no dilettante professor of 'perfections,' 'immaculate conducts.' 
He was a rugged Orson, rending his rough way through actual 
true work, — doubtless with many di fall therein. Insinceri- 
ties, faults, very many faults daily and hourly : it was too well 
known to him ; known to God and him !. The Sun was 
dimmed many a time ; but the Sun had not himself grown a 
Dimness. Cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for death, 30 
are those of a Christian heroic man. Broken prayers to God, 
that He would judge him and this Cause, He since man could 
not, in justice yet in pity. They are most touching words. 



246 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

He breathed-out his wild great soul, its toils and sins all 
ended now, into the presence of his Maker, in this manner. 

I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite ! Hypocrite, 
mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality ; empty barren 
quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs ? The man had made 
obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray ; and 
now he was^ there as he stood recognised unblamed, the vir- 
tual King of England. Cannot a man do without King's 
Coaches and Cloaks ? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks 

10 forever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape ? 
A simple Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages ; a George 
Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. 
One would say, it is what any genuine man could do ; and 
would do. The instant his real work were out in the matter 
of Kingship, — away with it ! 

Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a 
King is, in all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in 
this very War, what becomes of men when they cannot find a 
Chief Man, and their enemies can. The Scotch Nation was 

20 all but unanimous in Puritanism ; zealous and of one mind 
about it, as in this English end of the Island was always far 
from being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among 
them ; poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and 
suchlike ; none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, 
or durst commit himself to the truth. They had no leader ; 
and the scattered Cavalier party in that country had one: 
Montrose, the noblest of all the Cavaliers ; an accomplished, 
gallant-hearted, splendid man ; what one may call the Hero- 
Cavalier. Well, look at it ; on the one hand subjects without 

30 a King ; on the other a King without subjects ! The sub- 
jects without King can do nothing ; the subjectless King can 
do something. This Montrose, with a handful of Irish or 
Highland savages, few of them so much as guns in their 
hands, dashes at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild whirl- 



THE HERO AS KING 247 

wind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, 
from the field before him. He was at one period, for a short 
while, master of all Scotland. One man ; but he was a man : 
a million zealous men, but without the one ; they against him 
were powerless ! Perhaps of all the persons in that Puritan 
struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable one was 
verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and decide ; to be a fixed 
pillar in the welter of uncertainty ; — a King among them, 
whether they called him so or not. 

Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His 10 
other proceedings have all found advocates, and stand 
generally justified ; but this dismissal of the Rump Parlia- 
ment and assumption of the Protectorship, is what no one 
can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be King in England ; 
Chief Man of the victorious party in England : but it seems 
he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to 
perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was. 

England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the 
feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, 
What was to be done with it ? How will you govern these 20 
Nations, which Providence in a wondrous way has given-up 
to your disposal ? Clearly those hundred surviving members 
of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, 
cannot continue forever to sit. What is to be done ? — It 
was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may 
find easy to answer ; but to Cromwell, looking there into the 
real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. 
He asked of the Parliament, What it was they would decide 
upon ? It was for the Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers 
too, however contrary to Formula, they who had purchased 30 
this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they 
also should have something to say in it ! We will not ^^For 
all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We 



248 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which He 
through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or try 
to establish itself, in this land ! 

For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been 
sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make 
no answer ; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the 
nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no Parliament 
could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, 
talk ! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. 

10 You sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, 
to the whole nation, whom the nation already calls Rump 
Parliament, you cannot continue to sit there : who or what 
then is to follow ? ^Free Parliament,' right of Election, Con- 
stitutional Formulas of one sort or the other, — the thing is a 
hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be de- 
voured by it ! And who are you that prate of Constitutional 
Formulas, rights of Parliament ? You have had to kill your 
King, to make Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the law 
of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper : 

20 there are but fifty or three-score of you left there, debating 
in these days. Tell us what we shall do ; not in the way of 
Formula, but of practicable Fact ! 

How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. 
The diligent Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it 
out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would 
not, and indeed could not dissolve and disperse ; that when it 
came to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the 
tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it, — and Cromwell's 
patience failed him. But we will take the favourablest hy- 

sopothesis ever started for the Parliament; the favourablest, 
though I believe it is not the true one, but too favourable. 

According to this version : At the uttermost crisis, when 
Cromwell and his Officers were met on the one hand, and the 
fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly 



THE HERO AS KING 249 

told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair was answering in a 
very singular way; that in their splenetic envious despair, 
to keep-out the Army at least, these men were hurrying 
through the House a kind of Reform Bill, — Parliament to be 
chosen by the whole of England ; equable electoral division 
into districts ; free suffrage, and the rest of it ! A very 
questionable, or indeed for them an unquestionable thing. 
Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen ? Why, the Royal- 
ists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, per- 
haps outnumber us ; the great numerical majority of England 10 
was always indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and 
submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of 
heads, that we are the majority ! And now with your For- 
mulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our 
swords, shall again launch itself to sea ; become a mere hope, 
and likelihood, small even as a likelihood ? And it is not a 
likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God's 
strength and our own right hands, and do now hold here. 
Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members ; inter- 
rupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill ; — 20 
ordered them to begone, and talk there no more. — Can we 
not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John 
Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud 
him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. 
I fancy, most men who were realities in England might 
see into the necessity of that. 

The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of 
Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared 
appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, Whether it will 
support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles 30 
to govern in some constitutional way ; find some Parliament 
to support him ; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one 
they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convoca- 
tion of the Notables. From all quarters of England the lead- 



250 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

ing Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men 
most distinguished by religious reputation, influence and 
attachment to the true Cause : these are assembled to shape- 
out a plan. They sanctioned what was past ; shaped as they 
could what was to come. They were scornfully called Bare- 
bones^ s Parliament: the man's name, it seems, was not 
Barehones, but Barbone, — a good enough man. Nor was it 
a jest, their work ; it was a most serious reality, — a trial on 
the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ 

10 could become the Law of this England. There were men of 
sense among them, men of some quality ; men of deep piety 
I suppose the most of them were. They failed, it seems, and 
broke-down, endeavouring to reform the Court of Chancery ! 
They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up 
their power again into the hands of the Lord General Crom- 
well, to do with it what he liked and could. 

What will he do with it? The Lord General Cromwell, 
'Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be 
raised;' he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, 

20 as it were the one available Authority left in England, noth- 
ing between England and utter Anarchy but him alone. 
Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and England's, 
there and then. What will he do with it ? After delibera- 
tion, he decides that he will accept it; will formally, with 
public solemnity, say and vow before God and men, ^^Yes, 
the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it !" Pro- 
tectorship, Instrument of Government, — these are the 
external forms of the thing; worked out and sanctioned 
as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the 

30 leading Official people, Xouncil of Officers and Persons of 
interest in the Nation : ' and as for the thing itself, undeniably 
enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there was no 
alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might 
accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, 



THE HERO AS KING 251 

saved from suiciae thereby ! — I believe the Puritan People 
did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful 
and real way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver's ; at least, 
he and they together made it good, and always better to the 
last. But in their Parliamentary articulate way, they had 
their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it ! — 

Oliver's second Parliament, properly his first regular 
Parliament, chosen by the rule laid-down in the Instrument 
of Government, did assemble, and worked ; — but got, be- 
fore long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector's 10 
right, as to * usurpation,' and so forth ; and had at the earliest 
legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding Speech to 
these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third Par- 
liament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. 
Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are ; but most earnest- 
looking. You would say, it was a sincere helpless man ; not 
used to speak the great inorganic thought of him, but to act 
it rather ! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting ful- 
ness of meaning. He talks much about ^births of Provi- 
dence : ' All these changes, so many victories and events, were 20 
not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of me 
or of men ; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling 
them so ! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful 
emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Cromwell in 
that dark huge game he had been playing, the world wholly 
thrown into chaos round him, had foreseen it all, and played 
it all off like a precontrived puppetshow by wood and wire ! 
These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could 
tell what a day would bring forth: they were 'births of 
Providence,' God's finger guided us on, and we came at last 30 
to clear height of victory, God's Cause triumphant in these 
Nations ; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, 
and say in what manner all this could be organised, reduced 
into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were 



252 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

to help with your wise counsel in doing that. ^^You have 
had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever 
had." Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some 
measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, you 
have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionahties, bot- 
tomless cavillings and questionings about written laws for my 
coming here ; — and would send the whole matter in Chaos 
again, because I have no Notary's parchment, but only God's 
voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among 

lo you ! That opportunity is gone ; and we know not when it 
will return. You have had your constitutional Logic ; and 
Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in this land. 
"God be judge between you and me !" These are his final 
words to them: Take you your constitution-formulas in 
your hand; and I my mformal struggles, purposes, reali- 
ties and acts; and "God be judge between you and 
me!" — 

We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things 
the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. Wilfully ambiguous, 

20 unintelligible, say the most : a hypocrite shrouding himself 
in confused Jesuitic jargon ! To me they do not seem so. 
I will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever 
get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility 
of him. Try to believe that he means something, search 
lovingly what that may be : you will find a real speech lying 
imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a 
meaning in the great heart of this inarticulate man ! You 
will, for the first time, begin to see that he was a man ; not 
an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to you. 

30 The Histories and Biographies written of this Cromwell, 
written in shallow sceptical generations that could not know 
or conceive of a deep believing man, are far more obscure 
than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them only 
into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. ^ Heats and 



THE HERO AS KING 253 

jealousies/ says Lord Clarendon himself : 'heats and jealous- 
ies/ mere crabbed whims, theories and crotchets; these in- 
duced slow sober quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs 
and work ; and fly into red fury of confused war against the 
best-conditioned of Kings ! Try if you can find that true. 
Scepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts ; but it 
is really ultra vires there. It is Blindness laying-down the 
Laws of Optics. — 

Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as 
his second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came 10 
you there ? Show us some Notary parchment! Blind 
pedants: — ''Why, surely the same power which makes 
you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a 
Protector!" If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the 
name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and 
creation of that ? — 

Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but 
the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his 
district, to coerce the Royalist and other gainsayers, to 
govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. 20 
Formula shall not carry it, while the Reality is here ! I 
will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appoint- 
ing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true 
Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a 
Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of 
Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; 
I while God leaves me life ! — Why did he not give it up ; 
retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowl- 
edge him ? cry several. That is where they mistake. For 
him there was no giving of it up ! Prime Ministers have 30 
governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul ; and their word 
was a law while it held : but this Prime Minister was one that 
could not get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart 
and the Cavaliers waited to kill him ; to kill the Cause and 



254 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This 
Prime Minister could retire nowhither except into his tomb. 
One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His com- 
plaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid 
on him. Heavy ; which he must bear till death. Old Colo- 
nel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old 
battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable busi- 
ness, much against his will, — Cromwell ^follows him to 
the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; 

lobegs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother 
in arms ; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, 
deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: 
the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, 
sullenly goes his way. — And the man's head now white ; 
his strong arm growing weary with its long work ! I think 
always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that 
Palace of his; a right brave woman; as indeed they lived 
all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she heard a 
shot go-off, she thought it was her son killed. He had to 

20 come to her at least once a day, that she might see with 
her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother ! 

What had this man gained ; what had he gained ? He 

had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, 
ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in 
chains; his ^ place in History,' — place in History forsooth ! 
— has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and 
disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash 
in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce 
him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man ! 

30 Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much 
for us ? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life ; 
step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not 
spurn it, as we step on it ! — Let the Hero rest. It was not 
to men's judgment that he appealed ; nor have men judged 
him very well. 



THE HERO AS KING 



25s 



Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism 
had got itself hushed-up into decent composure, and its 
results made smooth, in 1688, there broke-out a far deeper 
explosion, much more difficult to hush-up, known to all 
mortals, and Uke to be long known, by the name of French 
Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Prot- 
estantism; the explosive confused return of mankind to 
Reality and Fact, now that they were perishing of Sem- 
blance and Sham. We call our English Puritanism the 
second act: "Well then, the Bible is true; let us go by 10 
the Bible!" "In Church," said Luther; "In Church and 
State," said Cromwell, "let us go by what actually is God's 
Truth." Men have to return to reality; they cannot live 
on semblance. The French Revolution, or third act, we 
may well call the final one ; for lower than that savage Sans- 
culottism men cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest 
haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; 
and may and must begin again confidently to build-up from 
that. The French explosion, like the English one, got its 
King, — who had no Notary parchment to show for him- 20 
self. We have still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, 
our second modern King. 

Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man 
as Cromwell. His enormous victories which reached over 
all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little Eng- 
land, are but as the high stilts on which the man is seen stand- 
ing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I find 
in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell ; only a far inferior 
sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the 
Awful Unnamable of this Universe; ^walking with God,' 30 
as he called it ; and faith and strength in that alone : latent 
thought and valour, content to lie latent, then burst out as 
in blaze of Heaven's lightning ! Napoleon lived in an age 
when God was no longer believed ; the meaning of all Silence, 



256 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin 
not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical 
Encydopedies. This was the length the man carried' it. 
Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt, everyway 
articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with 
our great chaotic ^articulate Cromwell's. Instead of 'dumb 
Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentous mixture 
of the Quack withal ! Hume's notion of the Fanatic-Hypo- 
crite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to 

10 Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, 
— where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at 
all. An element of blamable ambition shows itself, from 
the first, in this man ; gets the victory over him at last, and 
involves him and his work in ruin. 

^ False as a bulletin' became a proverb in Napoleon's 
time. He makes what excuse he could for it: that it was 
necessary to mislead the enemy, to keep-up his own men's 
courage, and so forth. On the whole, there are no excuses. 
A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in 

20 the long-run, better for Napoleon too if he had not told any. 
In fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the 
hour and day, meant to be found extant next day, what 
good can it ever be to promulgate lies ? The lies are found- 
out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will 
believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when 
it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old 
cry of wolf ! — A Lie is no-thing ; you cannot of nothing 
make something; you make nothing at last, and lose your 
labour into the bargain. 

30 Yet Napoleon had a sincerity: we are to distinguish be- 
tween what is superficial and what is fundamental in insin- 
cerity. Across these outer manoeuverings and quackeries 
of his, which were many and most blamable, let us discern 
withal that the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable 



THE HERO AS KING 257 

feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so long 
as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better 
than his culture was. His savans, Bourrienne tells us, in 
that voyage to Egypt were one evening busily occupied 
arguing that there could be no God. They had proved it, 
to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. Napoleon 
looking up into the stars, answers, ^^Very ingenious, Mes- 
sieurs: but who made all that?" The Atheistic logic runs- 
off from him like water ; the great Fact stares him in the 
face: ^'Who made all that?" So too in Practice: he, as 10 
every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, 
sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the 
matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward 
of his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, 
with praises, and demonstration how glorious it was, and 
how cheap withal. Napoleon, making little answer, asked 
for a pair of scissors, dipt one of the gold tassels from a 
window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. Some 
days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the 
horror of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but 20 
tinsel ! In Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his 
last days, insists on the practical, the real. ^^Why talk 
and complain; above all, why quarrel with one another? 
There is no resuU in it; it comes to nothing that one can 
do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" He speaks 
often so, to his poor discontented followers; he is like a 
piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid queru- 
lousness there. 

And accordingly was there not what we can call a faith 
in him, genuine so far as it went? That this new enor-30 
mous Democracy asserting itself here in the French Revo- 
lution is an insuppressible Fact, which the whole world, 
with its old forces and institutions, cannot put down; this 
was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and en- 



258 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

thusiasm along with it, — 2i faith. And did he not interpret 
the dim purport of it well? 'La carrier e ouverte aux talens, 
The implements to him who can handle them:' this actu- 
ally is the truth, and even the whole truth ; it includes what- 
ever the French Revolution, or any Revolution, could mean. 
Napoleon, in his first period, was a true Democrat. And 
yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, 
he knew that Democracy, if it were a true thing at all, could 
not be an anarchy : the man had a heart-hatred for anarchy. 

10 On that Twentieth of June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat 
in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by : Napoleon expresses 
the deepest contempt for persons in authority that they do 
not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of August he won- 
ders why there is no man to command these poor Swiss; 
they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democ- 
racy, yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon 
through all his great work. Through his brilliant Italian 
Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben, one would 
say, his inspiration is: ^Triumph to the French Revolution; 

20 assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that pre- 
tend to call it a Simulacrum ! ' Withal, however, he feels, 
and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority 
is ; how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. 
To bridle-in that great devouring, self-devouring French 
Revolution ; to tame it, so that its intrinsic purpose can be 
made good, that it may become organic, and be able to live 
among other organisms and formed things, not as a wasting 
destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed 
at, as the true purport of his life; nay what he actually 

30 managed to do ? Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes ; triumph 
after triumph, — he triumphed so far. There was an eye 
to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose natu- 
rally to be the King. All men saw that he was such. The 
common soldiers used to say on the march: "These bab- 



THE HERO AS KING 



259 



bling Avocats, up at Paris; all talk and no work! What 
wonder it runs all wrong ? We shall have to go and put our 
Petit Caporal there !'' They went, and put him there; they 
and France at large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, vic- 
tory over Europe ; — till the poor Lieutenant of La Fere, not 
unnaturally, might seem to himself the greatest of all men 
that had been in the world for some ages. 

But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got 
the upper hand. He apostatised from his old faith in Facts, 
took to believing in Semblances ; strove to connect him- 10 
self with Austrian Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false 
Feudalities, which he once saw clearly to be false ; — con- 
sidered that he would found "his Dynasty" and so forth; 
that the enormous French Revolution meant only that ! 
The man was 'given-up to strong delusion, that he should 
believe a lie;' a fearful but most sure thing. He did not 
know true from false now when he looked at them, — the 
fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of 
heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god: 
self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow 20 
naturally more and more. What a paltry patchwork of 
theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this 
man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it 
more real thereby ! His hollow Pope^ s-Concordat, pretend- 
ing to be a re-estabhshment of Catholicism, felt by himself 
to be the method of extirpating it, "/a vaccine de la religion :^^ 
his ceremonial Coronations, consecrations by the old Italian 
Chimera in Notre-Dame, — "wanting nothing to complete 
the pomp of it,'' as Augereau said, "nothing but the half- 
million of men who had died to put an end to all that "[30 
Cromwell's Inauguration was by the Sword and Bible; 
what we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and Bible 
wer^ borne before him, without any chimera: were not 
these the real emblems of Puritanism; its true decoration 



26o HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

and insignia? It had used them both in a very real man- 
ner, and pretended to stand by them now ! But this poor 
Napoleon mistook: he believed too much in the Dupe- 
ability of men; saw no fact deeper in man than Hunger 
and this ! He was mistaken. Like a man that should 
build upon cloud; his house and he fall down in confused 
wreck, and depart out of the world. 

Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and might 
be developed, were the temptation strong enough. 'Lead 

lous not into temptation' ! But it is fatal, I say, that it he 
developed. The thing into which it enters as a cognisable 
ingredient is doomed to be altogether transitory; and, 
however huge it may look, is in itself small. Napoleon's 
working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise it made? 
A flash as of gunpowder wide-spread; a blazing-up as of 
dry heath. For an hour the whole Universe seems wrapt 
in smoke and flame; but only for an hour. It goes out: 
the Universe with its old mountains and streams, its stars 
above and kind soil beneath, is still there. 

20 The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of 
courage; this Napoleonism was unjust , a falsehood, and 
could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this 
Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously 
down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, 
one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound- 
interest. I am not sure but he had better have lost his 
best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in 
the sea, than shot that poor German Bookseller, Palm ! It 
was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which no 

30 man, let him paint an inch thick, could make-out to be 
other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the 
like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as 
they thought of it, — waiting their day ! Which day ca'fhe: 
Germany rose round him. — What Napoleon did will in the 



THE HERO AS KING 261 

long-run amount to what he did justly; what Nature with 
her laws will sanction. To what of reality was in him ; to 
that and nothing more. The rest was all smoke and waste. 
La carriere ouverte aux talens: that great true Message, 
which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself everywhere, he 
left in a most inarticulate state. He was a great ebauche, 
a rude-draught never completed; as indeed what great 
man is other ? Left in too rude a state, alas ! 

His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at 
St. Helena, are almost tragical to consider. He seems to 10 
feel the most unaffected surprise that it has all gone so; 
that he is flung-out on the rock here, and the World is still 
moving on its axis. France is great, and all-great; and 
at bottom, he is France. England itself, he* says, is by 
Nature only an appendage of France; ^^ another Isle of 
Oleron to France." So it was by Nature j by Napoleon- 
Nature ; and yet look how in fact — Here am I ! He can- 
not understand it: inconceivable that the reality has not 
corresponded to his program of it; that France was not 
all-great, that he was not France. 'Strong delusion,' that 20 
he should believe the thing to be which is not ! The com- 
pact, clear-seeing, decisive Italian nature of him, strong, 
genuine, which he once had, has enveloped itself, half- 
dissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere of French fanfar- 
onade. The world was not disposed to be trodden-down 
underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as 
he liked, for a pedestal to France and him : the world had 
quite other purposes in view ! Napoleon's astonishment is 
extreme. But alas, what help now? He had gone that 
way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having 30 
once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity; 
no rescue for him. He had to sink there, mournfully as 
man seldom did ; and break his great heart, and die, — 
this poor Napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted, 
till it was useless : our last Great Man ! 



262 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide 
roamings of ours through so many times and places, in 
search and study of Heroes, are to terminate. I am sorry 
for it: there was pleasure for me in this business, if also 
much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave and 
wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have 
named Hero-worship, It enters deeply, as I think, into 
the secret of Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in 
this world, and is well worth explaining at present. With 

10 six months, instead of six days, we might have done better. 
I promised to break-ground on it ; I know not whether I 
have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up 
in the rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often 
enough, with these abrupt utterances thrown-out isolated, 
unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. Toler- 
ance, patient candour, all-hoping favour and kindness, 
which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished 
and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of 
what is best in England, have listened patiently to my rude 

20 words. With many feelings, I heartily thank you all; and 
say. Good be with you all ! 




CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 



LECTURE I 

THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN 
'""^ ' MYTHOLOGY 

Heroes: Universal History consists essentially of their united 
Biographies. Religion not a man's church-creed, but his practical 
belief about himself and the Universe: Both with Men and Nations 
it is the One fact about them which creatively determines all the 
rest. Heathenism: Christianity: Modern Scepticism. The Hero 
as Divinity. Paganism a fact; not Quackery, nor Allegory: Not 
to be pretentiously ^ explained ' ; to be looked at as old Thought, 
and with sympathy (p. i). 

Nature no more seems divine except to the Prophet or Poet, 
because men have cea.sed to think: To the Pagan Thinker as to 
a child-man, all was either godlike or God. Canopus: Man. 
Hero-worship the basis of Religion, Loyalty, Society. A Hero 
not the ^creature of the time': Hero-worship indestructible. 
Johnson: Voltaire (8). 

Scandinavian Paganism the Rehgion of our Fathers. Iceland, 
the home of the Norse Poets, described. The Edda. The primary 
characteristic of Norse Paganism, the impersonation of the visible 
workings of Nature. Jo tuns and the Gods. Fire: Frost: 
Thunder: The Sun: Sea-Tempest. Mythus of the Creation: 
The Life-Tree Igdrasil. The modern ^Machine of the Universe' 

(17). 

The Norse Creed, as recorded, the summation of several suc- 
cessive systems: Originally the shape given to the national thought 
by their first *Man of Genius.' Odin: He has no history or date; 

263 



264 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

yet was no mere adjective, but a man of flesh and blood. How 
deified. The World of Nature, to every man a Fantasy of Him- 
self (23). 

Odin the inventor of Runes, of Letters and Poetry. His recep- 
tion as a Hero: the pattern Norse-Man; a God: His shadow over 
the whole History of his People (29). 

The essence of Norse Paganism, not so much Morality, as a 
sincere recognition of Nature: Sincerity better than Gracefulness. 
The Allegories, the after-creations of the Faith. Main practical 
Belief: Hall of Odin: Valkyrs: Destiny: Necessity of Valour. 
Its worth: Their Sea-Kings, Woodcutter Kings, our spiritual 
Progenitors. The growth of Odinism (33). 

The strong simplicity of Norse lore quite unrecognised by Gray. 
Thor's veritable Norse rage: Balder, the white Sungod. How 
the old Norse heart loves the Thunder-god, and sports with him: 
Huge Brobdingnag genius, needing onl}^ to be tamed-down into 
Shakspeares, Goethes. Truth in the Norse Songs. This World a 
show. Thor's Invasion of Jotunheim. The Ragnarok, or Twi- 
light of the Gods: The Old must die, that the New and Better 
may be born. Thor's last appearance. The Norse Creed a Con- 
secration of Valour. It and the whole Past a possession of the 
Present (37). 

LECTURE II 

THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET! ISLAM 

The Hero no longer regarded as a God, but as one god-inspired. 
All Heroes primarily of the same stuff; differing according to their 
reception. The welcome of its Heroes, the truest test of an epoch. 
Odin: Burns (p. 45). 

Mahomet a true Prophet ; not a scheming Impostor. A Great 
Man, and therefore first of all a sincere man: No nian to be 
judged merely by his faults. David the Hebrew King. Of all 
acts for man repentance the most .divine: (The deadliest sin, a 
supercilious consciousness of none) (46). 

Arabia described. The Arabs always a gifted people; of wild 
strong feehngs, and of iron restraint over these. Their Religiosity: 



CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 26$ 

Their Star- worship: Their Prophets and inspired men; from Job 
downwards. Their Holy Places. Mecca, its site, history and 
government (51). 

Mahomet. His youth: His fond Grandfather. Had no book- 
learning: Travels to the Syrian Fairs; and first comes in contact 
with the Christian Religion. An altogether solid, brotherly, genu- 
ine man: A good laugh, and a good flash of anger in him withal (55). 

Marries Kadijah. Begins his Prophet-career at forty years of 
age. Allah Akhar ; God is great: Islam; we must submit to God. 
Do we not all live in Islam? Mahomet, Hhe Prophet of God' 

(57). 

The good Kadijah beHeves in him: Mahomet's gratitude. His 
slow progress : Among forty of his kindred, young AH alone 
joined him. His good Uncle expostulates with him: Mahomet, 
bursting into tears, persists in his mission. The Hegira. Propa- 
gating by the sword: First get your sword: A thing will propagate 
Itself as it can. Nature a just umpire. Mahomet's Creed un- 
speakably better than the wooden idolatries and jangling Syrian 
Sects extirpated by it (62). 

The Koran, the universal standard of Mahometan life: An 
imperfectly, badly written, but genuine book: Enthusiastic extem- 
pore preaching, amid the hot haste of wrestling with flesh -and- 
blood and spiritual enemies. Its direct poetic insight. The 
World, Man, human Compassion ; all wholly miraculous to Ma- 
homet (69). 

His religion did not succeed by ^ being easy ' : None can. The 
sensual part of it not of Mahomet's making. He himself, frugal ; 
patched his own clothes ; proved a hero in a rough actual trial of 
twenty-three years. Traits of his generosity and resignation. 
His total freedom from cant (75). 

His moral precepts not always of the superfinest sort; yet is 
there always a tendency to good in them. His Heaven and Hell 
sensual, yet not altogether so. Infinite Nature of Duty. The 
evil of sensuality, in the slavery to pleasant things, not in the en- 
joyment of them. Mahometanism a religion heartily believed. 
To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into fight: 
Arabia first became alive by means of it (79). 



266 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

LECTURE III 

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE 

The Hero as Divinity or Prophet, inconsistent with the modern 
progress of science: The Hero Poet, a figure common to all ages. 
All Heroes at bottom the same ; the different sphere constituting 
the grand distinction: Examples. Varieties of aptitude (p. 84). 

Poet and Prophet meet in Vates: Their Gospel the same, for 
the Beautiful and the Good are one. All men somewhat of poets ; 
and the highest Poets far from perfect. Prose, and Poetry or 
musical Thought. Song a kind of inarticulate unfathomable 
speech: All deep things are Song. The Hero as Divinity, as 
Prophet, and then only as Poet, no indication that our estimate 
of the Great Man is diminishing: The Poet seems to be losing 
caste, but it is rather that our notions of God are rising higher (86). 

Shakspeare and Dante, Saints of Poetry. Dante: His history, 
in his Book and Portrait. His scholastic education, and its fruit 
of subtlety. His miseries: Love of Beatrice: His marriage not 
happy. A banished man: Will never return, if to plead guilty 
be the condition. His wanderings: ^^Come e duro calle.^^ At 
the Court of Delia Scala. The great soul of Dante, homeless on 
earth, made its home more and more in Eternity. His mystic, 
unfathomable Song. Death: Buried at Ravenna (92). 

His Divina Commedia a Song: Go deep enough, there is music 
everywhere. The sincerest of Poems: It has all been as if molten, 
in the hottest furnace of his soul. Its Intensity, and Pictorial 
power. The three parts make-up the true Unseen World of the 
Middle Ages: How the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be 
the two polar elements of this Creation. Paganism and Christian- 
ism (97). 

Ten silent centuries found a voice in Dante. The thing that is 
uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul differs altogether 
from what is uttered by the outer. The ^ uses' of Dante: We 
will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas it saves us. Ma- 
homet and Dante contrasted. Let a man do his work ; the fruit 
of it is the care of Another than he (106). 



CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 267 

As Dante embodies musically the Inner Life of the Middle 
xAges, so does Shakspeare embody the Outer Life which grew 
therefrom. The strange outbudding of English Existence which 
we call 'Elizabethan Era.' Shakspeare the chief of all Poets: 
His calm, all-seeing Intellect: His marvellous Portrait-painting 
(109). 

The Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect 
enough, — that he be able to see. Intellect the summary of all 
human gifts: Human intellect and vulpine intellect contrasted. 
Shakspeare's instinctive unconscious greatness : His works a part 
of Nature, and partaking of her inexhaustible depth. Shakspeare 
greater than Dante; in that he not only sorrowed, but triumphed 
over his sorrows. His mirthfulness, and geniune overflowing love 
of laughter. His Historical Plays, a kind of National Epic. The 
Battle of Agincourt: A noble Patriotism, far other than the 'in- 
difference' sometimes ascribed to him. His works, like so many 
windows, through which we see glimpses of the world that is in 
him (113). 

Dante the melodious Priest of Middle- Age Catholicism: Out 
of this Shakspeare too there rises a kind of Universal Psalm, 
not unfit to make itself heard among still more sacred Psalms. 
Shakspeare an ' unconscious Prophet ' ; and therein greater and 
truer than Mahomet. This poor Warwickshire Peasant worth 
more to us than a whole regiment of highest Dignitaries: Indian 
Empire, or Shakspeare, — which ? An Enghsh King, whom no 
time or chance can dethrone : A rallying-sign and bond of brother- 
hood for all Saxondom : Wheresoever English men and women 
are, they will say to one another, ' Yes, this Shakspeare is ours I ' 
(119). 

LECTURE IV 

THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION! KNOX; 

PURITANISM 

The Priest a kind of Prophet ; but mxore familiar, as the daily 
enlightener of daily life. A true Reformer he who appeals to 
Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force. The 



268 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

finished Poet often a symptom that his epoch itself has reached ■ 
perfection, and finished. Alas, the battling Reformer, too, is at 
times a needful and inevitable phenomenon: Offences do accu- ■ 
mulate, till they become insupportable. Forms of Belief, modes 
of life must perish; yet the Good of the Past survives, an ever- mi 
lasting possession for us all (p. 124). ■' 

Idols, or visible recognised Symbols, common to all Rehgions : 
Hateful only when insincere; The property of every Hero, that 
he come back to sincerity, to reality: Protestantism and ^private 
judgment.' No living communion possible among men who 
believe only in hearsays. The Hero-Teacher, who delivers men 
out of darkness into light. Not abolition of Hero-worship does 
Protestantism mean ; but rather a whole World of Heroes, of sin- 
cere, believing men (130). 

Luther; his obscure, seemingly-insignificant birth. His youth 
schooled in adversity and stern reality. Becomes a Monk. His 
rehgious despair : Discovers a Latin Bible : No wonder he should 
venerate the Bible. He visits Rome. Meets the Pope's fire by 
fire. At the Diet of Worms : The greatest moment in the modern 
History of men (137). 

The Wars that followed are not to be charged to the Reformation. 
The Old Religion once true : The cry of ^ No Popery' foolish enough 
in these days. Protestantism not dead : German Literature and 
the French Revolution rather considerable signs of life ! (146). 

How Luther held the sovereignty of the Reformation and kept 
Peace while he lived. His written Works : Their rugged homely 
strength: His dialect became the language of all writing. No 
mortal heart to be called braver, ever lived in that Teutonic Kin- 
dred, whose character is valour : Yet a most gentle heart withal, 
full of pity and love, as the truly valiant heart ever is : Traits of 
character from his Table-Talk: His daughter's Deathbed: The 
miraculous in Nature. His love of Music. His Portrait (148). 

Puritanism the only phasis of Protestantism that ripened into a 
living faith: Defective enough, but genuine. Its fruit in the world. 
The sailing of the Mayflower from Delft Haven the beginning of 
American Saxondom. In the history of Scotland properly but 
one epoch of world-interest, — the Reformation by Knox : a 



CARLYLFS SUMMARY 269 

'nation of heroes' : a believing nation. The Puritanism of Scot- 
land became that of England, of New England (154). 

Knpx * guilty' of being the bravest of all Scotchmen: Did not 
seek the post of Prophet. At the siege of St. Andrew's Castle. 
Emphatically a sincere man. A Galley-slave on the River Loire. 
An Old-Hebrew Prophet, in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister 
of the Sixteenth Century (157). 

Knox and Queen Mary: ^Who are you, that presume to school 
the nobles and sovereign of this realm ? ' ' Madam, a subject born 
within the same.' His intolerance — of falsehoods and knaveries. 
Not a mean acrid man ; else he had never been virtual President 
and Sovereign of Scotland. His unexpected vein of drollery: 
A cheery social man; practical, cautious-hopeful, patient. His 
* devout imagination' of a Theocracy, or Government of God. 
Hildebrand wished a Theocracy ; Cromwell wished it, fought for 
it: Mahomet attained it. In one form or other, it is the one thing 
to be struggled for (160). 

LECTURE V 

THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS 

The Hero as Man of Letters altogether a product of these new 
ages: A Heroic Soul in very strange guise. Literary men; genu- 
ine and spurious. Fichte's ^Divine Idea of the World': His 
notion of the True Man of Letters. Goethe, the Pattern Literary 
Hero (p. 166), 

The disorganised condition of Literature, the summary of all 
other modern disorganisations. The Writer of a true Book our 
true modern Preacher. Miraculous influence of Books: The 
Hebrew Bible. Books are now our actual University, our Church, 
our Parliament. With Books, Democracy is inevitable. Thought 
the true thaumaturgic influence, by which man works- all things 
whatsoever (171). 

Organisation of the 'Literary Guild': Needful disciphne; 'price- 
less lessons' of Poverty. The Literary Priesthood, and its impor- 
tance to society. Chinese Literary Governors. Fallen into 
strange times ; and strange things need to be speculated upon (178). 



270 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 

An age of Scepticism: The very possibility of Heroism for- 
mally abnegated. Benthamism an eyeless Heroism. Scepticism, 
Spiritual Paralysis, Insincerity: Heroes gone-out; Quacks come- 
in. Our brave Chatham himself lived the strangest mimetic life 
all along. Violent remedial revulsions: Chartisms, French Revo- 
lutions: The Age of Scepticism passing away. Let each Man 
look to the mending of his own Life (183). 

Johnson one of our Great English Souls. His miserable Youth 
and Hypochondria: Stubborn Self-help. His loyal submission 
to what is really higher than himself. How he stood by the old 
Formulas: Not less original for that. Formulas; their Use and 
Abuse. Johnson's unconscious sincerity. His Twofold Gospel, 
a kind of Moral Prudence and clear Hatred of Cant. His writings 
sincere and full of substance. Architectural nobleness of his 
Dictionary. Boswell, with all his faults, a true hero-worshipper 
of a true Hero (192). 

Rousseau a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; intense rather 
than strong. Had not the invaluable ^talent of Silence.' His 
Face, expressive of his character. His Egoism: Hungry for the 
praises of men. His books: Passionate appeals which did once 
more struggle towards Reality: A Prophet to his Time; as he 
could, and as the Time could. Rosepink, and artificial bedizen- 
ment. Fretted, exasperated, till the heart of him went mad: He 
could be cooped, starving, into garrets ; laughed at as a maniac ; 
but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire (199). 

Burns a genuine Hero, in a withered, unbelieving, secondhand 
Century. The largest soul of all the British lands, came among 
us in the shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. His heroic 
Father and Mother, and their sore struggle through life. His 
rough untutored dialect: Affectionate joyousness. His writings 
a poor fragment of him. His conversational gifts: High duch- 
esses and low ostlers alike fascinated by him (203). 

Resemblance between Burns and Mirabeau. Official Superiors: 
The greatest ' thinking-faculty ' in this land superciliously dispensed 
with. Hero-worship under strange conditions. The notablest 
phasis of Burns's history his visit to Edinburgh. For one man 
who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand 
adversity. Literary Lionism (207). 



CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 



LECTURE VI 



271 



THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON! MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM 

The King the most important of Great Men ; the summary of 
all the various figures of Heroism. To enthrone the Ablest Man, 
the true business of all Social procedure ; The Ideal of Constitu- 
tions. Tolerable and intolerable approximations. Divine Rights 
and Diabolic Wrongs (p. 211). 

The world's sad predicament ; that of having its Able-Man to 
seek, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it. The 
era of Modern Revolutionism dates from Luther. The French 
Revolution no mere act of General Insanity: Truth clad in hell- 
fire; the Trump of Doom to Plausibilities and empty Routine. 
The cry of 'Liberty and EquaHty' at bottom the repudiation of 
sham Heroes. Hero-worship exists forever and everywhere; 
from divine adoration down to the common courtesies of man and 
man: The soul of Order, to which all things, Revolutions included, 
work. Some Cromwell or Napoleon the necessary finish of Sans- 
culottism. The manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship 
itself first took rise (215). 

Puritanism a section of the universal war of Belief against 
Make-believe. Laud a weak ill-starred Pedant ; in his spasmodic 
vehemence heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity. Uni- 
versal necessity for true Forms: How to distinguish between 
True and False. The nakedest Reality preferable to any empty 
Semblance, however dignified (220). 

The work of the Puritans. The Sceptical Eighteenth century, 
and its constitutional estimate of Cromwell and his associates. No 
wish to disparage such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; a 
most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. The 
rugged outcast Cromwell, the man of them all in whom one still 
finds human stuff. The One thing worth revolting for (223). 

Cromwell's 'hypocrisy,' an impossible theory. His pious Life 
as a Farmer until forty years of age. His public successes honest 
successes of a brave man. His participation in the King's death 



272 HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



i 



no ground of condemnation. His eye for facts no hypocrite's gift. 
His Ironsides the embodiment of this insight of his (227). 

Know the men that may be trusted: Alas, this is yet, in these 
days, very far from us. CromwelFs hypochondria: His reputed 
confusion of speech: His habit of prayer. His speeches unpre- 
meditated and full of meaning. His reticences; called ^ lying' 
and 'dissimulation': Not one falsehood proved against him (233). 

Foolish charge of 'ambition.' The great Empire of Silence: 
Noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his depart- 
ment ; silently thinking, silently hoping, silently working. Two 
kinds of ambition ; one wholly blamable, the other laudable, inevi- 
table: How it actually was with Cromwell (238). 

Hume's Fanatic-Hypocrite theory. How indispensable every- 
where a King is, in all movements of men. Cromwell, as King of 
Puritanism, of England. Constitutional palaver: Dismissal of 
the Rump Parliament. Cromwell's Parliaments and Protector- 
ship: Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing for him 
but the way of Despotism. His closing days: His poor old 
Mother. It was not to men's judgments that he appealed; nor 
have men judged him very well (245). 

The French Revolution, the 'third act' of Protestantism. 
Napoleon, infected with the quackeries of his age: Had a kind 
of sincerity, — an instinct towards the practical. His faith, — 
'the Tools to him that can handle them,' the whole truth of De- 
mocracy. His heart-hatred of Anarchy. Finally, his quackeries 
got the upper hand: He would found a 'Dynasty': Believed 
wholly in the dupeability of Men. This Napoleonism was unjust, 
a falsehood, and could not last (255). 



NOTES 

LECTURE I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY 
[The first numeral refers to the page of the text, and the second to the line.] 

I, 2. Great Men. Carlyle at once emphasizes the preeminence of Great 
Men among the factors of history. Cf. Introd., p. xxxix. Not only does 
the Great Man determine the events of his epoch, but, in doing so, he is 
a kind of agent of Providence, revealing and accomplishing the will of God. 
Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. II, ch. viii: ' Great Men are the inspired (speak- 
ing and acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter 
is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.' 

I, 6. Hero-worship. The phrase is probably borrowed from David 
Hume, who wrote in his Natural History of Religion, Sect. IV, v, respect- 
ing polytheism : ' The same principles naturally deify mortals superior in 
power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero-worship.' As a 
historic force, hero-worship, or the allegiance paid by common men to 
their leaders, is only second to the influence of great men themselves. Cf. 
Introd., p. xl. 

1, lo. Universal History, etc. It is one of Carlyle's firmest convictions 
that history has resulted from the thoughts and deeds of its great men. 
He discredits the prevailing view that history is mainly the result of general 
social and economic causes. Cf. Introd., p. xliii. 

2, 28. a man's religion. Cf. Introd., p. xlii. Since the hero stands 
in a ' divine relation ' to his fellows, being * sent into the world ' by Provi- 
dence as an interpreter of spiritual truths, his function is primarily religious, 
and it becomes necessary at the outset to determine the meaning and im- 
portance of religion in human affairs. This accounts for Carlyle's discus- 
sion of religion at this point. 

3, 7. the thing a man does practically lay to heart, etc. Notice the 
union of the practical and the mystical features of religion in this definition. 
Carlyle regards a man's spiritual faith as the first source of power within 
him, for it creatively determines what he shall be and do ; but, beyond this 
practical consequence, it may so expand his thought as to make him vitally 
conscious of the insoluble mystery of existence. Fully to have pondered 
and understood this double meaning in religion is to have mastered Car- 
lyle's philosophy of life, and to have unfolded one of the seed thoughts of 
Heroes and Hero-Worship. 

5, 18. Grand Lamaism. The religion of Thibet. It is a form of Bud- 
dhism. According to its doctrine, Buddha is incarnate in the grand lama, 
or priest. Upon the latter's death, the god is reincarnated in some child, 
whose identity is disclosed by certain sacred marks upon him, or through 
signs from the spirit of the departed priest. 

5, 19. Mr. Turner's Account. Captain Samuel Turner, who was sent 

273 



274 NOTES 

to Thibet by Warren Hastings on behalf of the East India Company, 
wrote a book containing observations upon the customs of the country. 

5, 32. eldest-born of a certain genealogy. Referring to the laws of 
succession to the British throne. 

6, 8. Allegory. David Hume, a typical eighteenth century sceptic, 
was among the first to give an allegorical interpretation to the miraculous 
stories of the Bible and of pagan mythology. Carlyle was a close but 
unsympathetic student of Hume. 

7, 7. Pilgrim's Progress. The famous allegorical work of John Bunyan 
(1628-1688). 

8, 4. fancy of Plato's. Cf . 'P\a,to^s Republic, Bk. VII (Jowett's translation) : 
* After this, I said, imagine the enlightenment or ignorance of our nature in 
a figure; behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den,' etc. 

9,8. Nescience. Cf. Cent. Diet.: 'The state of not knowing; lack 
of knowledge ; ignorance. The unknowable.' Carlyle was always keenly 
aware of the limitations of human knowledge, and of the inability of science 
to explain more than a small part of the life of the universe. Beyond the 
bounds of acquirable knowledge, lies ' the great deep sacred infinitude of 
Nescience,' or the unexplainable, which should inspire in us reverential 
humility and awe. From such feeling comes the religious fervor of this 
and the following paragraphs, and the exalted poetic style in which they 
are couched. Cf. Introd., pp. xxviii, xxxv. 

9, 17. Apparitions. Here is an implication of Carlyle's feeling that, 
not our undying spirits, but our perishable bodies are really exhalations, 
apparitions which are and then are not. One of the finest expressions of 
this idea in all literature is contained in Sartor Resartus, Bk. Ill, ch. viii, 
*' Natural Supematuralism." Cf. Introd., p. xxviii. 

9, 25. There is not a leaf. Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, ch. xi: * The 
withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, 
though working in inverse order ; else how could it rot ? ' 

10, 14. All was Godlike or God. Quoted from Richter's Quintus Fixlein. 
10, 15. Jean Paul. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (i 763-1825) was a 

German writer and philosopher of whose work Carlyle was a profound 
student, having digested all of his fifty books and written two exhaustive 
reviews of them. Both Carlyle's thought and style were extensively 
influenced by Richter. 

10, 15. the giant Jean Paul. Cf. Carlyle's Critical and Miscellaneous 
Essays, Vol. I, ^' Richter " : ' Richter has been called an intellectual 
Colossus; and in truth it is somewhat in this light that we view him.' 

10, 12. Canopus. A star in the constellation of Argo, not visible in 
the Northern Hemisphere. It is one of the brightest stars in the heavens. 

ID, 20. the wild Ishmaelitish man. The Arabs regard Ishmael, son of 
Abraham and Hagar, as their ancestor, and the term Ishmaelite is often 
applied to dwellers of the desert. Cf. Genesis xvi. 12: ' And he will be a 
wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand 
against him.' 

10, 26. Sabeans. An ancient religious sect in Arabia and Persia who 
worshipped the sun and stars. The word Sabean comes from Saba, mean- 
ing the host of heaven. Cf. Sale, Koran, Preliminary Discourse, I. 



NOTES 275 

10, 28. Worship is transcendent wonder. This well-known definition 
is a compressed expression of Carlyle's whole attitude in religion. Cf. 
Introd., p. xxviii. 

11, 4. a window . . . Infinitude itself. Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, 
ch. xi : ^ Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insignificant ; all objects 
are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude 
itself.' Cf. Tennyson's lines: 

1 
Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. 

II, 15. St. Chrysostom. One of the early Church Fathers (347-407). 

II, 15. Shekinah. A Jewish word signifying the presence of God as 
revealed in a cloud or light above the Ark of the Covenant. Cf. Exodus 
XXV. 10 fif. ; Numbers vii. 89; ix. 15 fif. 

II, 23. but one Temple. Cf. i Cor. vi. 19: ' What? know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you? ' Also i Cor, 
iii. 16, and 2 Cor. vi. 16. 

11, 24. Novalis. The pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772- 
1801), a German poet and mystic. Carlyle wrote an essay on Novalis. 

12, 31. The greatest of all Heroes, etc. This is one of the many in- 
stances in which Carlyle, though he would subscribe to no orthodox forms 
of belief, expressed his reverence for the character of Christ. 

13, 8. Heroarchy. A coined term whereby Carlyle tries to express the 
rightful supremacy of real heroes, or great men, over their inferiors in the 
government of society. The paragraph is an assertion of his political thesis 
that the welfare of humanity depends upon the wise despotism of the great. 
* Society is founded on Hero-worship.' Cf. Introd., pp. xl, xliv. 

13, 10. King is Kon-ning, etc. A wrong etymology, which Carlyle often 
repeats. King is really derived from the Old English cyning or cyng, 
meaning king, or leader of the tribe. 

13,19. have to come revolutions then. Carlyle has in mind such periods 
as the French Revolution, when the heads of government and society 
having proved insufiicient, or false to their trust (' forged false notes '), the 
common people overthrew the ancient authority with ' cries of Democracy, 
Liberty and Equality, and I know not what.' 

15, 13. Boswell venerates his Jonson. Cf. Lecture V, pp. 198-199. In 
so far as Boswell possessed the instinct for hero-worship, Carlyle regarded 
him, notwithstanding his personal insignificance, as worthy of all defence 
and praise. 

15, 15. Voltaire. The great French author and wit (1694-1778). His 
triumphal visit to Paris, with which this paragraph deals, is fully narrated 
in Carlyle's essay on Voltaire. 

15, 24. Persiflage. Light flippant banter. 

15, 26. Ferney. A village in eastern France, near the Swiss border, 
where Voltaire lived in his old age. 



276 



NOTES 



15, 29. Calases. One of the many instances of Carlyle's use of plural- 
ized proper names for the sake of concreteness. Cf. Introd., p. xxxiv. 
Calas was a victim of religious persecution, having been executed on a 
false charge of murder. After his death, Voltaire cleared his name of the 
imputations laid upon it. 

16, 3. Douanier. A custom-house official. 

16, 6. Va bon train. Make good speed ; go fast. 

16, 13. Pontiff of Encyclopedism. Voltaire was a sort of * high priest,* 
or chief exponent, of a school of sceptical philosophers who wrote for the 
Encyclopedie, and who are therefore known in philosophy as the French 
Encyclopaedists. 

17, 24. strange island Iceland. The paragraph beginning here deserves 
close study as an example of Carlyle's powers of description. Cf. Introd., 
p. xxxiv. 

17, 29. jokuls. An Icelandic word meaning snow mountains. 

18, 8. Saemund. It has been pretty definitely established that Saemund 
(1056-1133) was not the collector of the Edda in its present form. The 
compilation was made by an unknown Icelander after Saemund's death. 

18, 13. Edda. Etymologists tend to regard the word as meaning the 
art of poetry. This significance attaches only to the so-called Younger 
Edda, which contains a treatise on poetry. 

18, 15. Snorro Sturleson. A poet and scholar (11 78-1 241), who wrote 
a book called " Edda," or Art of Poetry, containing allusions to old Norse 
legends which obhged him to preface his treatise on verse with a compact 
manual of Norse mythology. This is the Younger Edda. 

I9> 3- Jotuns. With regard to the origin of the Jotuns, cf. note on 22. 2. 

19, 6. Gods. With regard to the origin of the Gods, cf. note on 22. 2. 
19, 9. Asgard. With regard to the origin of Asgard, cf. 22. 7. This 

home of the Norse divinities was figured as a city in the heavens, containing 
three resplendent palaces, — Gladsheim for the Gods, Vingolf for the 
Goddesses, and Valhalla, the great hall of Odin. In the last of these 
gathered the souls of earthly warriors slain in battle. Here they feasted 
upon the boar Serimnir, whose flesh was renewed every night. The heroes 
amused themselves by fighting in the courtyard of Valhalla. They cut 
each other to pieces in their contests, but were quickly made whole again. 

19, 10. Jotunheim. Cf. note on 22. 2. Out beyond the earth and the 
known limits of the sea was this ' distant dark chaotic land ' of ice and stern 
mountains, the fit habitation of the malign powers of the winter storm. 

19,17. Loke. The arch-demon of Norse mythology. He was a personi- 
fication of the devastating agency of fire. Although a member of the race 
of Jotuns, he forced his way into Asgard, where he was adopted by the 
Gods. He soon proved to be a mischief-maker, a corrupter of the ancient 
purity of Asgard, and he was destined to be a medium of the final destruc- 
tion of the world. Cf. note on 42. 19. Loke had three children. His 
daughter Hela was made the guardian of Hell. Cf. note on 22. 18. A 
second offspring was the Midgard-serpent, a reptile so huge that, when 
thrown out of heaven into the sea, it encircled the earth (Midgard) by 
placing its tail in its mouth, thereby holding the earth firmly in position. 
Fenris-wolf, the third of Loke's monstrous brood, gave the Gods so much 



NOTES * 277 

trouble that they shut him in a cave, and bound him with a magic chain 
made of six things which do not exist: noise of a cat's footfall, beards of 
women, roots of stones, breath of fishes, nerves of bears, and spittle of birds. 

19, 18. Ladrones Islands. Islands in the Pacific, discovered by a com- 
panion of Magellan in 1521. 

20, I. Thor. The eldest son of Odin, and next to him in rank and power 
among the Gods. He was the strongest of the Gods, and his strength 
was enhanced by three magic possessions. His hammer when hurled 
through the thunder-clouds was the terrible lightning, which kills all that 
it strikes. When thrown, it Returned to his hand of its own accord. His 
divine might was doubled when he wore his belt of strength and his iron 
gloves. He was the great friend of man, for, as the personification of 
beneficent summer heat, he was the arch-enemy and destroyer of the 
malicious winter demons, the Jotuns. Thor = Thursday. 

20, 9. Balder. Cf. note on 37. 31. 

20, 23-27. ^gir . . . Eager. The etymologists now believe that 
there is no connection between eager (meaning tidal wave) and the name 
of the Norse sea-god. The word eager is applied by boatmen on the 
Trent, the Humber, and the Severn to tidal waves of unusual height when 
they are caused by the rushing of the tide up the streams. 

22, 2. primary mythus of the Creation. The Eddas assert that, before 
the earth was created, its present position was in the midst of a bottomless 
deep called Ginungagap. To the remote north of this hollow space was 
Nifleheim, the world of mist. In Nifleheim was the fountain Hvergelmir, 
whence sprang twelve rivers, whose waters flowed into the vast deep and 
were frozen into fields of ice. To the remote south of Giginungagap was 
Muspelheim, the world of light and heat, ruled over by Surtr and his 
flame-warriors. The winds from the warm southland blew over the ice 
in Ginungagap and melted it. From the vapors which were produced, 
the giant Ymer took form, and, from the perspiration beneath his arm-pits, 
sprang a numerous progeny of giants. He was nourished by the milk 
of the cow Audhumbla, who was created with him. The cow fed upon the 
salt and hoar frost of the ice plains. While one day licking the salt rocks, 
she uncovered the scalp of a huge being, on the next day the head, and on 
the third the whole form. This creature's name was Buri. He married a 
daughter of the giants. Their son Bor became the father of Odin, Vili, and 
Vi, the first of the Gods. These three brothers entered into a conflict with 
the giants, slew Ymer, and out of his body formed the world in the manner 
described in the text. Only one pair of giants escaped destruction. They 
fled to Jotunheim, the stormy outlying region of the newly created earth. 
Here they became the progenitors of the Jotuns, of whom cf. 19. 3. 

22, 9. Hyper-Brobdignagian. That is, exceeding in size even Swift's 
giants of the land of Brobdingnag (not Brobdignag) in Gulliver^ s Travels. 

22, 15. the Tree Igdrasil. This mighty tree was supposed to encircle 
and support the whole universe. There were three roots, — one in 
Jotunheim, one in Nifleheim, and one in Asgard. It was the root extending 
into Asgard (not the one in Nifleheim, or the Death-kingdom) which was 
tended by the three Norns. The Norse representation of life as a tree 
appealed particularly to Carlyle, because it was the vivid emblem of the 



278 



NOTES 



fundamental truth that a principle of existence is at the bottom of all 
things, and that life, despite its apparent disorder, is essentially a unified 
organism. Cf, Introd., p. xxxiv. 

22, 18. kingdoms of Hela or Death. The Norse hell was a region of 
intense cold and darkness, situated in the dim northern region of Nifleheim. 
Here were gathered the souls of women and children, and of all men who 
had not died a brave death in battle. Helheim, as it was called, was pre- 
sided over by Hela, the ghastly daughter of the demon Loke. Cf. note on 
19. 17. Her flesh was blue colored, and her features stern and hideous. 
Her hall was called Elvidnir. Hunger was her table, Starvation her knife, 
Delay her man. Slowness her maid, Precipice her threshold. Care her bed, 
and Burning Anguish the hangings of her apartment. 

22, 22. Sacred Well. The fountain of wisdom, guarded by the giant 
Mimir. In order to drink of its waters, Odin pawned one of his eyes, and 
hence is always represented as a ' one-eyed ' deity. 

22, 32. the infinite conjugation, etc. Quotation from Carlyle's French 
Revolution, Bk. Ill, ch. i : ' The All of things is an infinite conjugation of 
the verb. To Do.' 

23, 2. Ulfila. The translator of the Bible into Gothic. He was born 
in 311, made Bishop of the Goths in 341, and died at Constantinople in 
381. His translation is the oldest extant monument of Teutonic literature. 

23, 5. Machine of the Universe. A scornful term for the philosophy 
of those sceptics who would reduce all life to a material {i.e. mechanical) 
explanation. The hit is aimed especially at a school of thinkers known as 
the Utilitarians. Cf. Hero as Man of Letters, p. 186. 

25, 2. Councils of Trebisond, etc. A marked example of Carlyle's 
method of attaining concrete effectiveness through the pluralizing of 
proper nouns. Cf. Introd., p. xxxiv. The prehistoric councils and 
thinkers of early Norse mythology are here symbolized by important 
convocations and leaders in the history of Christianity. There was, how- 
ever, no Council of Trebisond (a town in Asia Minor). The Council of 
Trent was a general (Ecumenical) Council of the Church held at Trent in 
Austria, 1 545-1 563, in an effort to reconcile the Catholics and Protestants. 
Athanasius (about 296-373), Bishop of Alexandria, was a famous Church 
Father, who, at the council of Nice (325), was the most influential factor 
in establishing orthodox tenets respecting the divinity of Christ. Carlyle 
has Dante here stand as an expositor of pure Catholicism, and takes Luther, 
of course, as the representative of Protestantism. 

25, 19. Heimskringla. The Saga or Story of the Kings of Norway. 
The book is called Heimskringla from its opening word, which means 
*' the world's circle." 

25, 22. Asen. It was formerly supposed that this name was given to 
Odin's followers because they came out of Asia. This view, which Carlyle 
adopts, is now discredited. The word " Asen " in Old Norse means " Gods." 

25, 27. Saxo Grammaticus. A Danish historian of the twelfth century. 
His Gesta Danorum (1185) treats the Norse Gods as having been actual 
earthly kings and heroes. 

25, 31. Torfaeus. An Icelandic scholar (1636-1719) who made a col- 
lection of saga manuscripts. 



NOTES 279 

26, 22. Lope. Lope de Vega (i 562-1 635), the famous Spanish dramatist. 
His name was a sort of synonym for goodness. ' It became a common 
proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope; so that jewels, diamonds, 
pictures, etc., were raised into esteem by calling them his.' Montalvan 
iObras Sueltas, Tom. XX, p. 53). 

26, 26. Adam Smith. A Scotch political economist (17 23-1 790). His 
best known work is the Wealth of Nations (1776). 

28, 3. camera-obscura. '(Latin, dark chamber), an apparatus in which 
the images of external objects, received through a convex lens, are exhibited 
distinctly and in their natural colors on a white surface placed at the focus 
of the lens.' Cent. Diet. An ordinary photographic camera produces a 
camera-obscura image on the ground glass behind the lens. This image 
is small, inverted and very clear, a fact which impairs Carlyle's use of the 
term camera-obscura to signify the ' magnifying ' effect of tradition. 

28, 8. Arundel-marble. Ancient Greek marbles which were once owned 
by the Earl of Arundel, but are now the property of Oxford University. 
Upon some of them is inscribed the Parian Chronicle, a record of events of 
Greek history from 1582 to 264 B.C. 

29, 2. Image of his own Dream. Quoted from Novalis. In this para- 
graph Carlyle is merely contending that every man sees life, ' the world 
of Nature,' not as it actually is, but as it appears through his own per- 
sonal prejudices and limited human faculties. In this sense, it becomes a 
* Phantasy of Himself,' * the multiplex " Image of his own Dream." ' * So 
that this so solid-seeming world, after all, were but an air-image, our Me 
the only reality : and Nature, with its thousand fold production and de- 
struction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, " the phantasy of our 
Dream." ' Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, ch. viii. 

29, 15. Cestus of Venus. * The broidered girdle, fair-wrought, wherein 
are all her enchantments'; therein are love, and desire, and loving converse, 
that seals the wits even of the wise.' Iliad, xiv, 214 ff, (Lang, Leaf and 
Myers's translation). In his essay On Grace and Dignity, Schiller main- 
tains that the girdle of Venus symbolizes the harmony between sensuous 
and moral beauty. 

29, 24. Odin's Runes. The Old English word run means literally a 
secret, or mystery. In the plural it signifies the ancient Scandinavian 
alphabet, and is also applicable to any mysterious writing or speech. Ac- 
cording to one of the myths in the Elder Edda, Odin sacrificed himself to 
himself by hanging for nine whole nights upon the wind-rocked tree Igdra- 
sil, and within this time he invented the runes. 

29, 32. Atahualpa. This was the Peruvian King who was conquered 
and treacherously slain by Pizarro in 1533. He was the last of the native 
monarchs of Peru. Dios is the Spanish word for God. 

31, II. Wednesbury, etc. English towns whose names are derived from 
the word Ddin. 

34, 6. Valkyrs and the Hall of Odin. The Valkyrs, or Valkyries, served 
as handmaidens at the banquets of the Gods, but their peculiar office was 
to descend to every field of battle, sway the victory, and carry to Valhalla 
(Hall of Odin) the souls of the slain warriors. Hence, " Choosers of the 
Slain." 



28o NOTES 

35, 20. Rollo. The first Duke of Normandy (?86o-?93o). He was a 
Norse viking who ascended the river Seine with his followers, and in 911 
or 912 compelled the King of France to grant him the sovereignty of the 
region now known as Normandy. As compared with this achievement, 
Carlyle regards the exploits of Agamemnon as ' a small audacity.' Rollo 
was an ancestor of William the Conqueror. 

35, 30. Skalds. The ancient Scandinavian bards, who composed poems 
in celebration of the deeds of warriors and kings, and sang them at public 
festivals. 

36, 31. The Cow Adumbla. Cf. note on 22. 2. 

37, 10. Voluspa. " The SybiPs Prophecy." The Voluspa is the prin- 
cipal poem of the Elder Edda. It contains traces of Christian influence, 
and seems to have been given its present form about the year 1000 a.d. It 
contains an account of the chief Norse myths which is largely paraphrased 
in the Younger or Prose Edda. 

37, 19. Gray's fragments of Norse Lore. Thomas Gray (1716-1771) 
wrote two poems, The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, which are free 
paraphrases of old Norse tales. Gray was not possessed of a scholarly 
knowledge of his originals. The romantic mystery with which he invests 
his poems is not Norse in character. 

37, 20. Pope . . . Homer. As is very commonly known, the formal 
eighteenth century style of Pope's Homeric translations is wholly different 
from the original manner of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Cf. Matthew 
Arnold's On Translating Homer. 

37, 31. Balder. The beneficent God of summer, second son of Odin 
and Frigga. He was even a kindlier friend of men than Thor. His death 
foreboded the final triumph of the Jotuns of the winter storm, and the 
decay which would end with the destruction of men and Gods. In Balder's 
benign character, his death, his descent into hell, his prophesied second 
coming in some happy future, the early Christian missionaries of the 
north found analogies to the legends of Christ. Matthew Arnold's poem 
Balder Dead is a beautiful modern rendering of the ancient tale. In its 
main outlines the story runs in the following manner. Balder the Good, 
having had troubled dreams which presaged his death, confided them to 
his mother Frigga, who exacted of all animate and inanimate things on 
the earth an oath that they would not harm her son, — of all things except 
an insignificant twig of mistletoe. The evil God Loke, disguising himself 
as an old woman, drew from Frigga the secret concerning the mistletoe. 
He then went into the forest and secured the branch. Meanwhile, the 
Gods in Valhalla were amusing themselves by throwing darts and stones 
at Balder, with which they knew that they were unable to hurt him, since 
his purity was a shield against all harm. Loke, returning to Valhalla, 
placed the mistletoe bough in the hands of the blind Hoder (God of winter), 
who was standing idle in the sports, and, directing the latter's aim, he 
caused the fatal branch to pierce through and through the body of Balder, 
who straightway fell dead upon the floor of the court. Balder's soul was 
carried to the Death-kingdom, whither Hermod (messenger of the Gods) 
was despatched to sue with Hela for his return. Hela replied that she 
would yield up Balder only on condition that all nature should weep for 



NOTES 281 

him. Again Loke disguised himself as an ancient woman, and, though all 
other living and lifeless objects in the world mourned for the slain deity, 
this withered hag refused to do it. And so Balder remained imprisoned 
in Helheim, to reappear, however, after the final destruction of all things, 
and to rule in peace over a newly created earth and heaven. Loke's 
treachery having been suspected, he changed himself jnto the shape of a 
salmon, and lay hidden among the stones of a brook. At length he was 
caught and made to assume his natural form. He then was chained to a 
mountain rock, and over him was suspended a serpent whose deadly venom, 
in falling upon him, caused him so to writhe in torture that the whole earth 
trembled. Loke was not to break his chains until the day of the last great 
battle between his kinsmen, the Jotuns, and the Aesir, which was to cause 
the overthrow of the world. 

37» 33- Frigga- Cf. preceding note. 

38, I. Hermoder. Hermoder, or Hermod, was the swiftest of the Gods. 
He was the servant and messenger of Odin. Cf. note on 37. 31. 

38, 3. the Bridge. The bridge over the river Gioll. It was paved and 
roofed with gold. 

38, 3. the Keeper. The keeper and guardian of the bridge was a maiden 
named Modgud. 

38, II. thimble. Accurately speaking, Nanna sent her ring, not a 
thimble, to Frigga. 

38, 16. Uhland. Ludwig Uhland (i 787-1 862) was a German poet and 
essayist. In 1836 he published a monograph entitled Der Mythus von 
Thor. 

38, 24. Thialfi, Manual Labour. Thialfi, because of his constant at- 
tendance upon the God of thunder in the latter's travels, is thought to have 
signified not only manual labor, but also the rushing thunder shower. Cf. 
TYiOT^Q, N orthern Mythology, p. 173. 

39, 5. Brobdignag. Cf. 22. 9, and note. 

39, 6. Hamlet. Most good editions of Hamlet will supply a discussion 
of the sources of the play. 

39, 20. Old Saxo. Cf. 25. 27, and note. 

40, 3. * We are such stuff as Dreams are made of.* The Tempest, IV, i, 
156. Carlyle probably quotes this verse more frequently than any other 
verse in Shakespeare. 

40, 6. Thialfi. Cf. note on 38. 24. 

40, 6. Loke. Cf. notes on 19. 17, 22. 18, 37. 31, and 42. 19. 

41, 27. Midgard-snake. .Offspring of the demon Loke. Cf. note on 
19. 17. 

42, II. Mimer-stithy. That is to say, the smithy of wisdom, since 
Mimer was keeper of the well of wisdom, which sprang from beneath the 
roots of the tree Igdrasil. 

42, 16. Ben Jensen, rare eld Ben. Next to Shakespeare, the most 
famous of the Elizabethan dramatists (1574-1637). On his tombstone 
in Westminster Abbey, Sir John Young wrote his epitaph, containing the 
words : ' O rare Ben Jonson ! ' 

42, 19. Ragnarok. It was a fatalistic belief of the Norsemen that an 
age would come when the whole of creation would be destroyed. This 



282 NOTES 

" Twilight of the Gods " (Ragnarok) was to be foreshadowed by three 
heavy continuous winters, followed by three other similar winters, during 
which war and discord were to spread throughout the earth. The Midgard- 
serpent was to rise from his bed in the sea ; the Fenris-wolf and Loke were 
to break their chains. These evil beings then would unite with the Jotuns 
in one last battle with the Gods. In this conflict Odin would fall victim 
to the Fenris-wolf, and Thor would slay the Midgard-serpent, but perish 
himself in the venom of the dying monster. All the Gods and Jotuns 
would wage a mutually destructive battle. When all had been slain, 
Surtr would dart fire and flames over the world, the sun would grow dim, 
the earth sink in the ocean, the stars fall from their places, and time would 
be no more. 

42, 21. Voluspa Song. Cf. note on 37. 10. 

42, 25. World-serpent. Midgard-serpent. Cf. notes on 19. 17 and 
42. 19. 

42, 34. a phoenix fire-death. The Phoenix myth is of Eastern origin. 
According to the most familiar version, the Phoenix, after having lived to 
an age of five or six hundred years, builds itself a funeral pyre, and from 
its ashes springs into a renewed life. It is often regarded, therefore, as 
an emblem of immortality. 

43, 9. King Olaf . The legend here given was told, not of Olaf the Saint 
as Carlyle has it, but of Olaf Trygvason, a still earlier king, who was active 
in introducing Christianity. 

44, 4. Pindar. Greek poet, celebrated for his odes (about 522-443 B.C.). 
44, 4. Neptune. God of the sea in classical mythology. In his Nemean 

odes, Pindar says that Poseidon (Neptune) visited the Isthmian (not the 
Nemean) games frequently (not once only). Carlyle has made a slight 
error in his quotation. 

44, 31. Meister. The hero of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister^s Apprentice- 
ship and Travels, which Carlyle had translated. Upon his travels Meister 
arrives in a land whose sacred matters are presided over by the " Three." 
He is informed that the community has regard for three types of religion : 
the Ethical, which includes all heathen beliefs, the Philosophical and the 
Christian. The answer quoted is given, not by the Teacher, but by the 
Three. 

LECTURE II. THE HERO AS PROPHET 

46, 7. all originally of one stuff. A statement of a fundamental prin- 
ciple in Carlyle's doctrine. Cf. pp. 84-86, 124, and Introd., p. xl. 

46, II. deliquium. Figuratively, a melting or swooning mood of mind. 

46, 13. to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did. Carlyle often com- 
plains of the world's mistreatment of Burns. Cf. lecture on the Hero 
as Man of Letters, pp. 203, 210. In his essay on Burns Carlyle writes: 
* And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrel- 
ling with smugglers and vintners, computing excise-dues on tallow, and 
gauging ale-barrels I In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully 
wasted.' 

47, 7. Mahomet . . . Imposter. Carlyle's lecture on the prophet has 
done much to destroy the supposition that Mahomet was an imposter. 



NOTES 283 

The old prejudice is voiced by Gibbon in ch. 1 of his Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire; ' Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; 
and a politician will suspect that he secretly smiled (the victorious im- 
poster !) at the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. 

47, II. Pococke. Edward Pocock, or Pococke (1604-1691), an English 
orientalist and biblical commentator. 

47, 12. Grotius. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a celebrated Dutch theo- 
logian and publicist, who was founder of the science of international law. 

47, 31. Age of Scepticism. The theories concerning Mahomet's impos- 
ture flourished particularly in the eighteenth century, an age which Carlyle 
always likes to call an Age of Scepticism. Cf. pp. 183, ff. 

48, 9. Cagliostro. The assumed name of Giuseppe Balsamo (1743- 
i795)> 3,n Italian adventurer who became notorious through his connection 
with the affair of the diamond necklace in Paris, one of the incidents which 
directly caused the French Revolution. After years of successful charla- 
tanism, Cagliostro was finally arrested and consigned to a prison at San 
Leon, where he died. Cf. Carlyle's essays Cagliostro and The Diamond 
Necklace. 

48, 18. Mirabeau (1749-1791). One of the great popular leaders 
during the French Revolution. He was the foremost orator of his time. 
In 1790 he became president of the Jacobin Club, and in 179 1 of the National 
Assembly. Cf. Carlyle's essay on Mirabeau. 

48, 21. Sincerity. In this and the following paragraph is Carlyle's 
first considerable statement of the importance and meaning of this primal 
characteristic of all heroes. The significance of these paragraphs should 
be thoroughly mastered. Cf. Introd., pp. xli, ff. 

49, 10. from the Infinite Unknown. A form of Carlyle's favorite idea 
that the hero is not made by his times, but is heaven sent. Cf. p. 14, and 
Introd., p. xliv. 

49, 22. The inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. 
Quoted from J oh xxxii. 8 : ' But there is a spirit in man : and the inspira- 
tion of the Almighty giveth them understanding.' 

51, 9. Their country itself. The paragraphs which follow here are a 
remarkable example of Carlyle's descriptive art. Cf. Introd., p. xxxiv. 

51, 4. Sale. George Sale (1690-1736) wrote a translation of the Koran. 
He prefaced it with a Preliminary Discourse to which Carlyle here refers. 

52, II. Sabeans. Cf. 10. 26, and note. 

53, 12. Black Stone. According to tradition, the Black Stone was 
originally a precious gem sent down to Abraham from heaven, but its 
first brightness had become blackened by the impure kisses of generations 
of sinful pilgrims. It is built into the wall of the Caabah just within reach 
of the pilgrims' lips. 

53, 13- Caabah. This cube-shaped building, placed in the centre of 
the court of the great Mosque at Mecca, is the most sacred shrine of the 
Mohammedans. 

53, 13. Diodorus Siculus. A Greek historian of the first century B.C. 
who wrote a Historical Library, which was a history of the world down 
to 60 B.C. 

53, 16. Silvestre de Sacy. A French oriental scholar (1758-1838). 



284 NOTES 

53, 24. Well . . . Hagar . . . Ishmael. Ishmael was the son of Abra- 
ham and Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, Abraham's wife. At Sarah's 
demand, Hagar and Ishmael were cast out into the desert. In their 
wanderings a well was miraculously discovered to Hagar : ' And God 
opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water ; and she went, and filled the 
bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.' Genesis xxi. 19. 

53, 33 . Keblah. The point toward which Mohammedans turn in prayer. 

53, 34. from Delhi all onwards to Morocco. Delhi in India and Morocco 
in northwestern Africa represent the opposite limits of the Mohammedan 
empire. 

54, 6. Mecca. It is the capital of Arabia, and the religious centre of 
Mohammedanism. The town is situated in the midst of a sandy valley 
about seventy miles from the Red Sea. 

57, 17. horse-shoe vein in Scott's Redgauntlet. Cf. " Letter Eleventh " 
in Redgauntlet: ' Ye maun ken he had a way of bending his brows, that 
men saw the visible mark of a horse-shoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as 
if it had been stamped there.' 

58, S3. Mount Hara. Three miles from Mecca. 

58, 33. Mount Sinai. More famous for its associations with the prophet 
Moses than with Mahomet. Cf. Exodus xix. 

59, 25. of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes. Heraclius (575-641), 
Emperor of the East, defeated the Persian king Chosroes II in the Battle 
of Nineveh, 627. They are here contrasted with Mahomet because they 
were the most eminent contemporary monarchs. 

59, 30. Sheik. A tribal and religious chief among the Mohammedans. 
60,. 2. Ramadhan. The ninth month of the Mohammedan year. Each 

day of the entire month is observed as a fast by the Mohammedans from 
dawn till sunset. 

60, 6. small still voices. Carlyle has in mind the ' still small voice ' 
through which God spoke to Elijah (i Kings xix. 12). 

60, 20. all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment. 
An expression of Carlyle's own mystic philosophy. Cf. Introd., p. xxvii, 

60, 28. Islam. ' The true significance of the word Islam, . . . Saint 
(salama, in the first and fourth conjugations) means in the first instance 
to be tranquil, at rest, to have done one's duty, to have paid up, to be at 
perfect peace, and, finally, to hand oneself over to Him with whom peace 
is made. The noun derived from it means peace, greeting, safety, 
salvation. The word thus implies absolute submission to God's will — 
as generally assumed — neither in the first instance, nor exclusively, but 
means, on the contrary, one who strives after righteousness with his own 
strength.' Syed Ameer Ali, Critical Examination, ch. xi, p. 159. 

61, 24. Though He slay me. Quoted from Job xiii. 15. 

61, 25. Annihilation of Self. A phrase borrowed from Novalis, who 
said : ' The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self.' Cf. Carlyle's 
essay on Novalis. The idea is at the heart of most spiritual teaching. 
Cf . the saying of Christ, Matthew x. 39 : ' He that findeth his life shall lose 
it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' 

61, 31. Gabriel. The archangel Gabriel was- supposed to have brought 
the book of the Koran to Mahomet from Heaven. 



NOTES 285 

61, 32. inspiration of the Almighty. Cf. 49. 22, and note. 

64, 30. some rider's horse taking fright. Carlyle has in mind a specific 
incident. Mahomet was pursued by one of his fiercest enemies, whose 
horse reared and fell as soon as his master caught sight of the prophet. 
The accident was supposed to be an evidence of Mahomet's supernatural 
powers, and caused the conversion of his idolatrous foe. 

.66, 8. Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons. At Paderborn, in 777, 
Charlemagne forced the Saxons to submit to Christian baptism at the point 
of the sword. 

66, 15. conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. In 
this assertion of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, Carlyle simply 
means that any principle which permanently establishes itself in the world, 
whether by the sword or otherwise, must be sound and healthy at the heart ; 
otherwise it could not endure. Under this interpretation, the idea that 
' might makes right ' was one of Carlyle's firmest convictions and most 
frequent assertions. Through exercising the might of his sword, Mahomet 
overcame an undeserving idolatry, and permanently estabhshed the 
righteous principles of his own faith. Might made right. 

67, 28. Homoiousion and Homoousion. From Greek words meaning 
'' similar substance " and " same substance." Of the two early sects of 
the church, the Arians held that Christ and God were of similar substance, 
the Athanasians that they were of the same substance. At the Council 
of Nice, in 325, the controversy was settled in favor of the Athanasians, and 
their belief, in this particular, has ever since been fundamental in the creed 
of Trinitarian churches. The Arian view is held by modern Unitarians. 

69, 8. Flight to Mecca. A slip on Carlyle's part. Obviously he meant 
to say ' Flight from Mecca.' 

70, 18. written in Heaven. Referring to the tradition that the Koran 
was brought from heaven by Gabriel and revealed to Mahomet. 

70, 32. Prideaux. Humphrey Prideaux (1648-17 24), an English clergy- 
man who wrote a tract called The True Nature of Imposture fully Displayed 
in the Life of Mahomet. 

72, 7. the inspiration of a Gabriel. Cf. 61. 31, and note. 

72, 31. the Prophet Hud. A prophet mentioned in the Koran. 

73, 19. Mahomet can work no miracles. Mahomet often denied that he 
possessed magic powers, and maintained that he was merely a preacher. 
' Signs are in the power of God alone; and I am no more than a public 
preacher.' Koran, Sura 29. 

77, II. His last words. ' After a little he prayed in a whisper: " Lord, 
grant me pardon; and join me to the companionship on high." Then 
at intervals : " -Eternity in Paradise ! " — " Pardon ! " — ^' Yes : the blessed 
companionship on high ! " He stretched himself gently. Then all was 
still.' Muir, Life of Mahomet, ch. xxxiii, pp. 508 f. 

77, 17. The Lord giveth, etc. Cf. Job i. 21. 

78, 17. War of Tabuc. Tabuc is an Arabian valley. The war occurred 
in the year 630. 

79, 25. too. As well as according to Christianity. 

79, 28. tenth part. Corresponding to the biblical tithe. 

80, 7. highest joys . . . spiritual. * God promiseth unto the true 




286 NOTES 

believers, both men and women, gardens through which rivers flow, whereii 
they shall remain for ever; and delicious dwellings in the gardens of per- 
petual abode : but good will from God shall be their most excellent reward.' 
Koran, Sura g. 

8i, I. The Month Ramadhan. The Mohammedan Lent. Cf. 60. 2, 
and note. 

81, 15. the Infinite Nature of Duty. In Carlyle's personal ethics this 
was indeed the ' grand spiritual Fact, and Beginning of Facts.* Cf. Introd., 
p. xxviii. 

81, 30. Bentham. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the leading ex- 
ponent of Utilitarianism, — that '' Profit and Loss " philosophy of modern 
life which Carlyle hated almost more than anything else in the world. 

81, 30. Paley. William Paley (i 743-1 805), an English clergyman who 
preached the good utilitarian doctrine that we should do the right in order 
that we may enter heaven after death, and that we should avoid evil ac- 
tions in order that we may escape the penalties of hell. 

82, II. beggarlier. ' Perhaps the most energetic expression of his 
ideal of disinterested duty is the onslaught on Benthamism in " Hero 
Worship," which, as Carlyle pronounced the word " beggarlier," brought 
Mill to his feet with an emphatic No ! ' Richard Garnett's Thomas Carlyle, 
p. 171. John Stuart Mill, the great political economist, believed in some 
of the doctrines of Bentham. 

83, II. Granada . . . Delhi. Granada was conquered by the Saracens, 
711-714; Delhi was conquered by the Saracens, 635-642. 

LECTURE III. THE HERO AS POET 

84, 24. the Hero can be Poet, etc. Cf. Introd., p. xl. 

85, 9. Mirabeau. Cf. 48. 18, and note. 

85, 15. Austerlitz Battles. At the battle of Austerlitz, Dec. 2, 1805, 
Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians. 

85, 17. Turenne. Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675) was the greatest of 
Louis the Fourteenth's marshals. He was created marshal-general of 
France in 1660. 

85, 21. Petrarch and Boccaccio. Two of the greatest names in Italian 
literature. The Renaissance, or revival of classical learning, was originated 
mainly by these men. Petrarch (1304-13 74) is now read chiefly in his 
sonnets addressed to Laura, and Boccaccio (13 13-1375) in his collection 
of prose tales known as the Decameron. 

86, 17. Vates means both Prophet and Poet. Because prophecies were 
often given in verse. 

86, 27. Fichte. A celebrated German philosopher (i 762-1814) who 
profoundly influenced Carlyle. 

87, 34. Consider the lilies. Cf. Matthew vi. 28. 

88, 12. Vauxhall. From 1661-1859 a popular and fashionable place of 
amusement in London. The resort is described in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, 
Vol. I, ch. vi, and in Addison's Spectator, No. 383, " Sir Roger at Vauxhall." 

88, 21. The imagination that shudders. Carlyle here quotes from his 
own essay on Burns. 



NOTES 287 

88, 24. Saxo Grammaticus. Cf. 25. 27, and note. 

92, 27. It is five centuries. Dante died in 1321. 

92, 29. The Book. Of course Carlyle refers to The Divine Comedy, 
which so far surpasses Dante's many other works in fame and importance 
that it may justly be called the Book. 

92, 30. Giotto. The greatest artist of his age (i 276-1337). He was 
the contemporary and friend of Dante. In 1840, two months after the 
delivery of Carlyle's lecture, a portrait of Dante was discovered beneath 
the plaster on the walls of the Palace of the Podesta in Florence. It is a 
representation of the poet in the freshness of his youth. This is now the 
only portrait of Dante which is commonly attributed to Giotto. The 
painting which Carlyle describes is supposed to be by some other hand. 

93, 21. voice of ten silent centuries. This phrase is quoted from the 
German writer Tieck. Cf. 97. 22, and note. The ten centuries preceding 
Dante were silent in the sense that no great poet had arisen within them 
to express their ideals. At the end of the period, Dante came to give a 
finished literary utterance, a ' voice,' to these ideals. 

93, 21. his mystic unfathomable song. Also quoted from Tieck. 

94, 3. chiaroscuro. A distribution of light and shade. 

94, 12. graceful affecting account. The beautiful poem of Dante's 
youth, La Vita Nuova, the first of his books. Many scholars now regard 
this tale of love as an allegory, and the Beatrice of the poem as the expres- 
sion of an ideal. The identification of the heroine with Beatrice Portinari 
is questionable. 

94, 20. far from happily. There is no evidence of domestic unhappiness 
beyond Boccaccio's gossipy Life of Dante, and the poet's omission of refer- 
ence to his wife in any of his works. 

94, 24. Prior, Podesta. In 1300 Dante was one of the six Priors of 
Florence for a single term (two months), but he never filled the highest 
office of the city, that of Podesta (a kind of Lord Mayor). 

95, 3. Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri. The Guelphs and the Ghibellines 
were the two great contesting parties in the mediaeval history of Italy and 
Germany. The Guelphs included the common people and supporters of 
the Pope. The Emperor of Germany was head of the GhibelHnes, who were 
composed chiefly of the aristocracy. The Bianchi (Whites) and the Neri 
(Blacks) were subdivisions of the Guelph party. The Bianchi, of whom 
Dante was one, were defeated and banished from Florence in 1302. 

95, 25. How hard is the path. Quoted from the Paradise, xvii, 58-60: 

Thou shalt prove 
How salt the savor is of other's bread ; 
How hard the passage to descend and climb 
By other's stairs. 

(This and other quotations out of The Divine Comedy in these notes are 
from Gary's translation.) 

95, 29. Can della Scala. Can Grande della Scala was head of the reign- 
ing house of Verona, and a patron of the exiled poet. He was born in 1291 
and died in 1329. 



288 NOTES 



96, 26. Malebolge. Meaning evil wallets or pouches. Dante so names 
it because of the depth and narrowness of its pits. Its * gloomy circles ' 
are wonderfully described in the Inferno, xviii. 

96, 27. alti guai. Literally '' deep groans." The expression refers 
specifically, not to Malebolge, but to the sounds heard by Dante imme- 
diately within the gates of Hell. Cf. the Inferno, iii, 21-23; 

Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans, 
Resounded through the air pierced by no star, 
That e'en I wept at entering. 

96, 32. Divine Comedy. In a letter to Can della Scala, Dante gives his 
reason for calling the poem a comedy : ' For if we regard the matter in the 
commencement it is horrible and stinking, inasmuch as it begins with Hell ; 
but, in the conclusion, it is prosperous, pleasant, and desirable, inasmuch 
as it ends with Paradise.' 

97, 5. follow thou thy star. In the seventh circle Dante finds his old 
tutor, Brunetto Latini, who addresses him in a speech beginning with the 
quoted words. Cf. the Inferno, xv, 55. 

97, II. which has made me lean. Quoted from the Paradise, xxv, 3. 

97, 22. Tieck. Ludwig Tieck (i 773-1853), a German poet, novelist 
and critic. Cf. 93. 21, and notes. 

98, 24. Canto fermo. A ' fixed song,' proceeding * as by chant ' in an 
unalterable form. ' The ancient traditional music of the Christian Church.' 
Cent. Diet. 

98, 25. terza rima. A form of verse in iambic metre which was popular 
among early Italian poets. The Divine Comedy is written in this metre. The 
stanzas consist of three lines of eleven syllables each, and alternate lines 
are made to rime together in groups of three, i.e. aba, bcb, ode, ded, etc. 

99, 16. to become perfect through suffering. Adopted from Hebrews 
ii. 10: ' For it became him ... to make the captain of their salvation 
perfect through sufferings.' 

100, 8. Hall of Dite. The city of Dis, within the sixth circle, is enclosed 
by fiery battlements and towers. Cf . the Inferno, viii, 68 : 

The minarets already, Sir I 
There, certes, in the valley I descry, 
Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire 
Had issued. 

100, 12. Tacitus. Latin historian (about 55-117), noted for the con- 
ciseness of his style. 

100, 18. Plutus. God of riches. He stands guard over the avaricious 
and the prodigal in the fourth circle of Hell. 

100, 19. Virgil's rebuke. Dante was accompanied in his journey 
through Hell and Purgatory by the shade of the Roman poet. Virgil's 
* rebuke ' is administered in the Inferno, vii, 8, f. 

100, 21. Brunetto Latini. Dante's old schoolmaster. Cf. 97. 5, and 
note. 

100, 24. Tombs. Within the city of Dis the souls of heretics are con- 
fined in burning tombs. Cf. the Inferno, ix. 



NOTES 289 



100, 27. Farinata . . . Cavalcante. Florentines condemned to punish- 
ment in the burning halls because of heresy. Farinata, who had been a 
proud Ghibelline leader, rises haughtily from his tomb when Dante ad- 
dresses him : 

his breast and forehead there 
Erecting, seemed as in high scorn he held 
E'en hell. — The Inferno, x, 35-37. 

Cavalcante falls back into his tomb on hearing through Dante of the 
death of his son. 

loi, 2>3' Francesca and her Lover. Francesca da Rimini, an Italian 
lady of the thirteenth century, was married against her will to a crippled 
nobleman, Giovanni Maletesta. Her love for Paola, the brother of Gio- 
vanni, and their death at the hands of the jealous husband, is the theme 
of one of the most familiar love tales in literature. It has been rendered 
in many forms. Dante's version, though very brief, is perhaps the most 
beautiful and famous of all. In the second circle, where the victims of 
unlawful passion are punished, he draws from Francesca her tragic story. 
Cf. the Inferno, v. 

102, 2. della bella persona, che mi fu tolta. Cf. the Inferno, v, 99-101 : 

Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt, 
Entangled him hy that fair form, from me 
Ta'en in such cruel sort, as grieves me still. 

102, 4. he will never part from her. Cf . the Inferno, v, 102-104 • ' 

Love, that denial takes from none beloved, 
Caught me with pleasing him so passing well, 
That, as thou seest, he yet deserts me not. 

102, 5. alti guai. Cf. 96. 27, and note. 

102, 6. aer bruno. Literally ^' the brown air." Dante uses the phrase 
to describe the approach of evening upon earth. Cf. the Inferno, ii, i. 

102, 9. Infinite pity. After Dante has represented Francesca telling her 
story, he continues: 

While thus one spirit spake, 
The other wailed so sorely, that heart-struck 
I, through compassion fainting, seemed not far 
From death, and like a corpse fell to the Ground. 

103, I. A Dio spiacenti. The several quotations which follow here are 
taken from canto iii of the Inferno, In Ante-Hell are suspended the 
wretched souls of those who lived 

Without or praise or blame, with that ill band 
Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved 
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves 
Were only. 



290 NOTES 

Virgil says to Dante: 



These of death 
No hope may entertain : . . . 
. . . mercy and justice scorn them both. 
Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by. 

Dante continues : 

Forthwith 
I understood, for certain, this the tribe 
Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing 
And to his foes. 

103, 17. Byronism of taste. Byron's poetry was somewhat morbid, 
gloomy and melodramatic, and it established a taste for literature of this 
color, which Carlyle himself successfully labored to destroy. Cf. John 
Morley's Critical Miscellanies, p. 217: *As a negative renovation, Carlyle's 
doctrine was perfect. It effectually put an end to the mood of Byronism.' 

103, 25. tremolar dell' onde. Misquoted. The correct reading is tre- 
molar delta marina. Cf. the Purgatorio, i, 11 5-1 17: 

The dawn had chased the matin hour of prime, 
Which fled before it, so that from afar 
I spied the trembling of the ocean stream. 

The passage occurs in the poet's description of his joy upon issuing from 
the infernal regions into the pure air that surrounds the isle of Purgatory. 
103, 27. the wandering Two. Dante and Virgil. 

103, 33. Tell my Giovanna to pray for me. The request of Nino, judge 
of Gallura, whom Dante finds in Ante-Purgatory. Cf. the Purgatorio, 
viii, 71. 

104, 2. bent-down like corbels of a building. On the first terrace of 
Purgatory the departed are so punished for the sin of pride. Cf. the 
Purgatorio, x, 1 19-124: 

As, to support incumbent floor or roof. 

For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, 

That crumples up its knees unto its breast. 

With the feigned posture stirring ruth unfeigned 

In the beholder's fancy ; so I saw 

These fashioned, when I noted well their guise. 

104, 7. Mountain shakes with joy. At the end of canto xx of the 
Purgatorio, Dante feels ' the mountain tremble,' and hears cries of praise 
ascending : 

"Glory !" all shouted (such the sounds mine ear 
Gathered from those, who near me swelled the sounds) 
"Glory in the highest be to God !" 



NOTES » 291 

In canto xxi (57-59) Statius instructs the poet that the mountain 

Trembles, when any spirit feels itself 
So purified, that it may rise, or move 
For rising ; and such loud acclaim ensues. 

105, II. Gehenna. The valley of Hinnom, situated south of Jerusalem. 
Here children were sacrificed to Moloch in the times of King Ahaz. In 
later times, malefactors were burned in this valley. It became the proto- 
type of the place of punishment, and was considered as the mouth of Hell. 
The word Gehenna is so used in the Talmud and in the New Testament. 

108, 6. Mahomet . . . had his Arabians at Grenada. Cf. 83. 11, and 
note. 

108, 29. Caliph Thrones. Mahomet and his successors. 

109, 3. piasters. The piaster is the unit of Turkish currency, repre- 
sented by a silver coin worth about four and a half cents. 

no, 3. Warwickshire Squire. Sir Thomas Lucy, who is mentioned by 
name just below. Carlyle refers to the familiar legend that the young 
Shakespeare, having stolen deer on the estate of Sir Thomas, was so per- 
secuted that he fled to London, where shortly afterward he began to find 
his way as a maker of plays. 

no, 9. Tree Igdrasil. Cf. 22. 15, and note. 

Ill, 4. King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths. Named as the sovereigns 
under whom English Protestantism was established. Carlyle is main- 
taining that, despite the overthrow of Catholicism in England, Shake- 
speare, its " noblest product," appeared as its expositor. Shakespeare, 
however, was not a Romanist, and his plays were an outgrowth of the 
mediaeval religion only in a very limited sense. They were essentially 
a product of the Renaissance. Carlyle's interpretation is misleading. 

Ill, 7. St. Stephen's. Formerly the House of Commons held its meet- 
ings in St. Stephen's Chapel, which was destroyed by fire in 1834. The 
site is now occupied by that portion of the House of Parliament known as 
St. Stephen's Hall. 

Ill, 8. the hustings. 'The temporary platform from which, previous 
to the Ballot Act of 1872, the nomination of candidates for ParHament 
was made, and on which these stood while addressing the electors.' New 
Eng. Diet. 

Ill, 9. Freemasons' Tavern. In London, some weeks after the dehvery 
of the lectures on Heroes, Carlyle and other distinguished men, in a meeting 
at Freemasons', founded the London Library. The sentence was inserted 
when the author was revising his lectures for the press. 

111, 32. Novum Organum. A book in which Lord Bacon formulated 
the principles of inductive reasoning. 

112, 24. Let there be light. ' And God said. Let there be light and there 
was light.' Genesis i. 3. 

118, 5. the crackling of thorns. Cf. Eccles. vii. 6: * For as the crackUng 
of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool.' 

118, 8. Dogberry and Verges. The foolish city watchmen in Much Ado 
About Nothing. 



292 NOTES 

118, 17. Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister. Goethe's review of Hamlet is con- 
tained in Wilhelm Meister' s Apprenticeship, Bk. IV, chs. iii-v, xii, passim. 
118, 18. August Wilhelm Schlegel. A German critic and poet (1767- 

1845). 

118, 21. Marlborough. Duke of Marlborough (1650-17 2 2), the great 
English general, commander of allied European forces against France in 
the War of the Spanish Succession. 

118, 29. battle of Agincourt. Cf. Henry V, IV. At Agincourt, near 
Calais in France, Henry V won a remarkable victory over the French in 

1415. 

1 18, 33 . Ye good yoemen. Henry's famous speech containing these words 
was uttered at the battle of Harfleur, not of Agincourt. Cf. Henry F, III, i. 

119, 22. Globe Playhouse. The most famous of the early London 
theatres. It was built in 1599, and destroyed by the Puritans in 1644. 
Shakespeare wrote exclusively for the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. 

119, 27. Disjecta membra. Scattered limbs. 

119, 33. Tophet. A place situated at the southeastern extremity of 
Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom. Cf. 105. 11, and note. Because of 
the abominations practised in Tophet, it became symbolical of Hell. 

119, 33- We are such stuff. Cf. 120. i, and note. 

120, I. scroll in Westminster Abbey. Kent's statue of Shakespeare in 
the Poets' Corner holds in the left hand a scroll on which is inscribed a 
part of Prospero's famous speech in The Tempest, IV, i : 

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded. 
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

121,32. Earl of Southampton. An English politician (1573-1624) ; a 
friend and patron of Shakespeare, who dedicated to him Venus and Adonis 
and The Rape of Lucrece. 

121, 33. Sir Thomas Lucy. Cf. no. 3, and note. 

122, I. Treadmill. In Carlyle's day, prisoners were sometimes dis- 
ciplined by being set to operate a treadmill. 

122, 25. New Holland. Australia. 

123, 10. Parametta. A town in New South Wales, Australia. 

123, 26. he cannot yet speak. Shortly before the deUvery of Heroes, 
Russia's first great poet, Pushkin, had died; but Russian literature was not 
then developed or widely known. Latterly, of course, Russia has found very 
distinct and potent " voices " in such writers as Turgenieff, Tolstoy, and 
their schools. 

LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST 

124, 2. all sorts of Heroes. Cf. 46. 7, and note. 
124, 19. open secret. Cf. 86. 24. 

126, 9. Saint Dominies and Thebaid Eremites. Saint Dominic (1170* 



NOTES ^93 

1 221) was a Spanish priest who preached against heresy and founded the 
order of Dominican friars, known in England as the Black Friars. The 
Thebaid Eremites were a religious order of the Egyptian Thebes, the 
members of which lived as hermits in caves and deserts. 

126, II. Walter Raleigh. The famous courtier, poet, historian, and 
man of affairs who flourished in the time of Shakespeare (155 2-1 6 18). 

126, 12. Ulfila. Cf. 23. 2, and note. 

126, 12. Cranmer. Archbishop of Canterbury. During the English 
Reformation, under Henry VIII and Edward VI, Cranmer was at the head 
of a commission which wrote the first English prayer-book. He was 
burned at the stake for heresy, 1556, in the Catholic reign of Queen Mary. 
Cranmer and Raleigh are named by Carlyle as representatives, in church 
and state, of the era of Protestant reform, and of the " true Catholicism '' 
which Shakespeare unfolds. 

126, 18. Orpheus. The enchantment of his music was so great, accord- 
ing to the Greek myth, that the wild beasts, and even the trees and the 
rocks, gathered to hear it. 

127, 2. Malebolges. Cf. 96. 26, and note. 

127, 6. Progress of the Species. A reference to the theory of evolution, 
which was being much discussed when Carlyle delivered Heroes, though 
Darwin's epoch-making book, Origin of the Species, did not appear until 
twenty years later. Carlyle was prejudiced against the theory. 

128, 16. Shakespeare's noble Feudalism. The subject-matter of many 
of Shakespeare's plays is the feudal society of the Middle Ages, with its 
graded order of vassals, overlords and kings. The dramatist was an evi- 
dent believer in the feudal principles of government. In his day, the idea 
of democracy had scarcely any hearing. 

128, 17. has to end in a French Revolution. The Revolution was caused 
by the degeneration of feudalism, the tyranny of the aristocracy and the 
growth of democratic feeling. 

128, 29. Odinism was Valour. Cf. 44. 13. 

129, 9. Schweidnitz Fort. Situated in the province of Silesia, Prussia. 
The fort was besieged and captured by the allied enemies of Frederick the 
Great on Sept. 30, 1761, during the Seven Years' War. According to rumor, 
so many Russian soldiers were hurried into a ditch by their officers that they 
were killed, and their dead bodies formed a passageway. ' This was the 
story current ; greatly exaggerated, I have no doubt.' Carlyle's History of 
Frederick II, Vol. XX, ch. viii. 

129, 30. Thor's strong hammer. Cf. 20. i, and note. 

131, 9. Canopus . . . Caabah Black-Stone. Cf. 53. 12-13, and notes. 

132, 19. Koreish. Cf. 63. 28. 

132, 21. Tetzel's Pardons of Sin. The German monk Tetzel (circ. 
1455-1519) was a member of the Dominican order who was sent by Pope 
Leo X into Saxony to sell indulgences; that is, written *' pardons of sin." 
The scandals of this traffic led to the protest of Luther, and to the Reforma- 
tion. Cf. 143. 5, and note. 

134, 14. Hogstraten, Tetzel and Dn Eck. These men were all stanch 
Catholics, and bitter opponents to Luther's reforms. Hogstraten was a 
Dominican monk, Dr. Eck a professor of theology at Ingolstadt. 



294 NOTES 

134, 20. Bellarmine. An Italian Jesuit and cardinal who lived half a 
century later than Luther. He zealously championed both the spiritual 
and the temporal authority of the Pope. 

136, 2$. Sansculottism. The word literally means the " ism " of those 
" without breeches." In his History of the French Revolution, Carlyle 
applies it continually to the ragged mobs of Paris, and to the extreme 
revolutionary party in general. In the last lecture on Heroes, he briefly 
explains how Napoleon became a king * amid the boundless revolt of 
sansculottism.' 

138, 34. Thor . . .thunder-hammer . . . Jotuns. Cf. 20. i, 22. 2, 
etc., and notes. 

139, 5- Erfurt. Luther entered the University at Erfurt in 1501. 
139, 22. became a Monk. In 1505. 

139, 22. Augustine Convent. There were four orders of monks in the 
Middle Ages: the Augustine, Dominican, Franciscan and Carmelite. 

140, 15. He had never seen the Book before. Luther says that the 
monks knew the works of the Church Fathers better than the Bible. 

140, 17. A brother monk. ' At last one of his brother monks, a pious, 
good man, told him, what was quite new to him at the time, that the real 
secret of the thing lay in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. This was 
the first insight he ever got into it, that it was not prayer nor masses at all 
that could save him, but falling down in spirit as Scripture says at the foot 
of the Cross! ' Carlyle's Lectures on the History of Literature. 

141, I. Elector of Saxony. The prince of Saxony. The old German 
Empire was divided into provinces whose rulers were called Electors be- 
cause they were vested with the right of electing the Emperor. 

142, 25. The Monk Tetzel. Cf. 132. 21, and note. 

143, 5. the first public challenge of Tetzel. The written challenge was 
nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. It contained 
Luther's famous ninety-five *' theses " or propositions opposing the sale 
of indulgences. Luther had previously delivered a sermon asserting the 
power of the church to remit its penalties, but denying its right to pardon sin. 
* Tetzel responded to this, and at last Luther saw himself obliged to look deeper 
into the matter, and to publish his ninety-five propositions as to indul- 
gences, denying the foundation of the whole matter altogether, and chal- 
lenging Tetzel to prove it to him either in reason or Scripture. This occa- 
sioned a great ferment in Germany, already in an unsettled state of opinion, 
and produced several missions from the Pope.' Carlyle's Lectures on the 
History of Literature. 

143, 19. with Huss, with Jerome. Huss and Jerome were celebrated 
Bohemian reformers, associated with each other in spreading the doc- 
trines of Wyclif and in preaching against indulgences. Each was burned 
at the stake on the charge of heresy, — Huss in 141 5, and Jerome in the 
year following. 

143, 21. Constance Council. A notable council of the church (141^'" 
1418) which met for the object, among other purposes, of suppressing the 
heresies of Huss and Jerome. 

144, 4. Bull. Papal decree or edict. So called because the parchment 
on which it was written was signed with the bulla, a leaden seal. It was 



NOTES 



295 



the Pope's bull condemning Luther's writings to be burnt which was de- 
stroyed by Luther in the manner narrated by Carlyle. 

144, S3' tiaras, triple-hats. The Pope's tiara is a cyUndrical hat, 
pointed at the top, tipped with the globe and cross of sovereignty, and 
surrounded with three crowns. 

145, 3. Worms. A town in the province of Rhine-Hesse, Germany. 
Pronounced Vorms. 

145, 9. nuncios. Permanent diplomatic agents of the Pope stationed 
in the European capitals. 

145, 21. Whosoever denieth me. ' But whosoever shall deny me before 
men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.' Matthew 
X. S3- 

146, 23. King Augeas's stables. Augeas, a mythical Greek king in 
EHs, kept an enormous herd of cattle. His cattle yards and stables re- 
mained uncleansed through many years, until at length the mighty hero 
Hercules turned the river Alpheus through them. This achievement was 
one of " the twelve labors " of Hercules. 

147, 27. The cry of No Popery. This cry was aroused by the famous 
Oxford Movement in the English church. In its beginnings the Move- 
ment attempted to prove that Roman and Protestant doctrines were 
essentially alike. A famous leader of this opinion was John Henry Newman, 
who formulated it in his Tract No. go. In 1842 Newman left the Anglican 
communion and joined the Catholic church, in which he eventually rose 
to the position of Cardinal. 

149, 25. Karlstadt's wild image-breaking. Karlstadt was the leader 
of a radical branch of Protestants who carried the reform movement to 
the point of breaking the images of the saints in the churches, and advocating 
the total banishment of priests and Bibles. Luther steadily opposed these 
extremities. 

149, 26. Anabaptists. So called because they denied the validity of 
infant baptism. Luther opposed the excesses of these reformers in their 
attempt to establish a socialistic order, the " Kingdom of the Saints," 
at Miinster in Westphalia in 1532. 

149, 26. the Peasants' War. An unsuccessful insurrection of German 
peasants against the clergy and nobles in 1525. It was largely inspired by 
the democratic ideas of the Reformation, but was not supported by Luther. 

150, 13. Richter. Cf. 10. 15, and note. 

150, 23. the Wartburg. An ancient royal castle near Eisenach, Ger- 
many. Here Luther was given an asylum by the Elector of Saxony in 
1521-1522. 

151, 31. Cowper. An English poet of the eighteenth century (1731- 
1800), whose work and life were characterized by melancholy. 

152, 16. Islam is all. Cf. pp. 77-78. 

152, 17. his solitary Patmos. From Patmos, an island in the ^gean 
Sea, St. John the Divine, living in solitary banishment, beheld the vision 
recorded in the book of Revelation. 

152, 17. Castle of Coburg. Luther lived here for several months in 1530. 

153, II. Kranach. Court painter to the Elector of Saxony, and an 
intimate friend of Luther (1472-1553). 



296 NOTES 

154, 10. Voltaireism. Voltaire, the great French writer of the eighteenth 
century, was a free thinker in religion. 

154, II. Gustavus Adolphus. A king of Sweden, who in the Thirty 
Years' War became leader of the Protestant powers. He was killed in 
battle in 1632. 

154, 34. the Mayflower. It was the Speedwell that sailed from Delft 
Haven. When this vessel reached Southampton in England, its passengers 
were taken aboard the Mayflower. 

155, 10. Starchamber hangmen. An allusion to the injustices of the 
Starchamber Court (estabUshed by Henry VII), from whose arbitrary 
decisions no legal appeal was permitted. Hampden and other Puritans 
suffered from Starchamber persecutions. This court was abolished in 1640. 

156, 34. Westminster Confession of Faith. The creed framed by a 
Puritan council at Westminster in 1646. Its articles were never accepted 
by England at large, but they were adopted by the Scotch Presbyterians. 

I57» 12. James Watt. Inventor of the steam engine (1736-1819). 

157, 12. David Hume. Philosopher and historian (1711-1776). 

157, 17. tumult in the High Church. Jenny Geddes is said to have 
occasioned a riot in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, on July 23, 1637, by 
hurling her folding stool at the head of an officiating bishop who, in oppo- 
sition to the Presbyterian sentiment of Scotland, was attempting to in- 
troduce the English ritual into the service. This incident is sometimes 
regarded as the beginning of the Puritan Revolution. 

157, 20. Glorious Revolution. The Revolution of 1688, which resulted 
in the dethronement of the tyrannical James II, the final suppression of 
Catholicism, and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. 

157, 24. ditch of Schweidnitz. Cf. 129. 9, and note. 

157, 27. Peasant Covenanters. Signers and defenders of the National 
Covenant (1638), an agreement among Scotch Presbyterians to observe 
the Confession of Faith, and to oppose the introduction of the Anglican 
ritual in Scotch churches. 

157, 30- in official pumps and silk-stockings. A phrase used to indicate 
the peaceable character of the " bloodless Revolution " of 1688, which was 
the result, not of war, but of the schemes of government officials. Prepara- 
tion for so ' beautiful ' a revolution had been laid, however, by the struggles 
of the Covenanters and Puritans in the great Civil War of the reign of 
Charles I. 

158, 9. in French galleys. In 1547 Knox and a number of fellow-re- 
formers were besieged in the castle of St. Andrews by the French. On 
July 31 the castle capitulated; Knox was taken prisoner and made to work 
as a galley slave on the River Loire. He was released in February, iS49, 
and went to England. 

158, 9. wander forlorn in exile. Knox lived on the continent from i5S4 
to 1559 to escape the persecutions of the Catholic Queen Mary of England. 

158, 20. had lived forty years. Knox was born in 1505. 

158, 22. a college education. In 1522 Knox entered Glasgow Univer- 
sity, but he does not appear to have graduated. 

158, 31. siege in St. Andrew's Castle. Cf. 158. 9, and note. 

159, 12. a baptism he was called to be baptized withal. ' But I have a 



NOTES 297 

baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accom- 
plished ! ' Luke xii. 50. 

159, 21. Galleys of the River Loire. Cf. 158. 9, and note. 

160, 15. Earl of Morton. Regent of Scotland 157 2-1 577. 

160, 23. Queen Mary. The lovely and accomplished Mary Stuart, 
Queen of Scots, was a Roman Catholic; and in the struggle between her 
religious sympathies and the Protestantism of her people, Knox, as the 
people's champion, had many dramatic encounters with her. 

161, 5. Guises. Mary's mother was a daughter of one of the French 
Dukes of Guise. Mary herself had been the queen of the French king, 
Francis II, who had died shortly before her return to Scotland. Through- 
out her life she was more sympathetic with Catholic France than with her 
native country. 

162, 29. his History. The History of the Reformation in Scotland. 

162, 33. rochets. Close-fitting vestments of linen or lawn, usually worn 
by bishops. 

162, 34. crosiers. The staffs of bishops. 

162, 34. quarter-staves. Old EngHsh weapons forijied of stout poles. 
They were so called because the staff was grasped by one hand in the 
middle, and by the other between the middle and the end. 

163, 7. pipe of Bordeaux. A pipe is a wine-measure, usually containing 
something over one hundred gallons. Bordeaux is the French city famous 
for its wines. 

163, 29. died. In 1572. 

164, 15. Regent Murray. James Stuart, Mary's half-brother. After 
Mary's abdication, he became Regent of Scotland. He was murdered in 
1570. 

164, 25. Hildebrand. Gregory VII, Pope 1073-1085. 

LECTURE V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 

168, 12. Fichte. Cf. 86. 27, and note. 

169, 18. Pillar of Fire. ' And the Lord went before them by day in a 
pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire, to 
give them Hght.' Exod. xiii. 21. 

169,27. Hodman. 'With labourers and hodmen it is otherwise: — 
their virtue consists in punctual obedience, in the careful avoidance of all 
independent thought, and in confiding the direction of their occupations 
to other men.' The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I, 250 f. 

169, 34. Goethe. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born 1749, died 
1832. 

172, 17. Ishmaelite. Cf. 10. 20, 53. 24, and notes. 

172, 21. Odin's Runes. Cf. 29. 24, and note. 

172,29. Agamemnon. Commanderof the Greek forces in the Trojan War. 

172, 29. Pericles. The great Athenian statesman, 495-429 B.C. 

174, I. Abelard. A celebrated French churchman, scholar and teacher 
of the Middle Ages (1079-1142), chiefly remembered as a founder of the 
scholastic philosophy and the lover of Heloise. 

174, 14. University of Paris. Schools were established in Paris under 



298 NOTES 



the successors of Charlemagne. They multiplied rapidly, and in the year 
1200 an edict of Philip Augustus united them under one management and 
created the University of Paris. 

176, I. lily of the fields. Cf. 87. 34, and note. 

176, 9. live coal from the altar. ' Then flew one of the seraphims unto 
me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs 
from off the altar : and he laid it upon my moiith.* Isaiah vi. 6, 7. 

176, 20. French sceptic. Cf. 15. 15, 16. 13, 154. 10, and notes. 

176, 27. worship . . . working. Cf. Past and Present, Bk. Ill, ch. xii: 
' On the whole we do entirely agree with those old Monks, Laborare est 
Orare. In a thousand senses, from one end of it to the other, true Work 
is Worship.' Cf. Introd., p. xxix. 

177, I. Witenagemote. From the Anglo-Saxon Witna, wise men, and 
gemot, council. The supreme parliamentary body of England in the days 
of the Anglo-Saxons. 

177, 8. Three Estates. Clergy, Nobles and Commons. 

178, 4. thaumaturgic. Wonder-working. 

I79> IS- Chaos should sit umpire. Cf. Paradise Lost, II, 907-909: 

Chaos umpire sits, 
And by decision more imbroils the fray 
By which he reigns. 

179, 25. Mendicant Orders. A reference to the mediaeval orders of 
begging friars. 

181, 9. Printer Cave. A London bookseller and founder of the Gentle- 
man's Magazine, to which Johnson contributed hack articles at the be- 
ginning of his literary career. 

181, 10. Ganger. During the last years of his life. Burns gained a 
livelihood as exciseman in the custom-house at Dumfries. The work was 
by no means so uncongenial to Burns as Carlyle's exaggerated statement 
would imply. 

181, 25. Pitt. William Pitt, the Younger (i 759-1806), Prime Minister, 
1783-1801 and 1804-1806. 

181, 26. Southey. Robert Southey, the English poet (1774-1843). 

183, 26. third man for thirty-six weeks. Quoted from Carlyle's own 
essay on Chartism. 

184, 13. Pandora's Box. According to Greek mythology. Pandora was 
the first of created women. She was given a box containing all the bless- 
ings of life. Curiosity prompting her to open the treasures, they all van- 
ished save hope. Another version of the story has it that the box was filled 
with human miseries. 

184, 28. Skalds. The ancient Norse poets or minstrels. 
184, 29. Tree Igdrasil. Cf. 22. 15, and note. 

186, 8. Bentham's theory. Cf. 81. 30, 82. n, and notes. 

187, 27. Phalaris'-BuU. Phalaris was a tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, 
sixth century B.C. He punished human victims by roasting them in a 
brazen bull. This image was contrived by Perillus, not by Phalaris him- 
self, as in the text ; and the inventor, not the tyrant, was the first sacrifice. 

189, 4. Cagliostro. Cf. 48. 9, and note. 



1 



NOTES 299 

189, 7. Chatham. William Pitt, the Elde^:, Earl of Chatham (1708- 
1778). The incident to which Carlyle refers took place a few days before 
the death of Chatham. 

189, 10. Walpole. Horace Walpole, author of Historical Memoirs and 
Letters (1717-1797). 

189, 24. Chartisms. Chartism was a social movement (1838-1848) for 
an extension of the suffrage to the laboring classes. The methods of agita- 
tion were often violent. 

191 > 5- Johnson, i 709-1 784. 

191, 15. Mahomet's Formulas. Cf. p. 60. 

191, 22. Bookseller Osborne. Johnson was once employed to catalogue 
a Ubrary for this man, whose behavior was so overbearing that Johnson 
knocked him down. 

192, I. I have already written. Carlyle wrote an essay on Burns and 
another on Johnson. His works make many incidental references to Rous- 
seau. 

193, 7. Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt. In the Greek legend, 
Dejanira, wife of Hercules, steeped the hero's shirt in the blood of the cen- 
taur Nessus, whom he had slain for having stolen his wife from him. The 
virus of this blood caused the garment to eat into the flesh of Hercules. 
It could be removed only by tearing away the skin. Hercules, in his agony, 
ascended and lighted his own funeral pyre. He was snatched from the 
flames and carried to Mount Olympus. 

193, 19. at Oxford. Johnson was a student at Pembroke College, 
Oxford, from 1728 to 173 1. 

193, 20. College Servitor. Formerly, at Oxford, a poor student who 
was paid certain sums from the college treasury for waiting at table upon 
the fellows and gentlemen commoners. 

193, 21. Gentleman Commoner. A name applied to Oxford students 
not dependent on the foundation for support. 

194, 25. Chiirch of St. Clement Danes. In the Strand, London. John- 
son's pew is still shown. 

197, I. in a world where much is to be done. The phrase occurs in a 
prayer of Johnson's : * And while it shall please thee to continue me in this 
world, where much is to be done and little to be known, teach me by thy 
Holy Spirit.' Boswell's Johnson (year 1784). 

197, 9. Clear your mind of Cant. Cant : ' A whining pretension to 
goodness in formal and affected terms.' Johnson's Dictionary. Boswell 
reports, May 15, 1783, the following remarks of Johnson: * My dear friend, 
clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do ; you may say 
to a man, ** Sir, I am your most humble servant.'* You are not his 
most humble servant. . . . You tell a man, " I am sorry you had such 
bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet." You 
don't care six-pence whether he is wet or dry. You may talk in this manner ; 
it is a mode of talking in Society: but don't think foolishly.' 

198, 7. Bozzy. This name was frequently given to Boswell on account 
of his lack of worth and dignity. 

198, 10. Scotch Laird. Boswell was a Scotch landlord; also an advo- 
cate. 



300 NOTES 

1^8, 17. witty Frenchman. It is not positively known what Frenchman 
origiimted the aphorism. 

198, 24. Louis Quatorze. The great French King Louis XIV (1635- 

1715). 

198, 25. a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved. So 

Falstaff describes Justice Shallow in 2 Henry I V, III, ii, 334. 

199, II. ultimus Romanorum. Plutarch has this phrase as the saying 
of Brutus over the dead body of Cassius (Life of Brutus). 

199, 12. Rousseau. 17 12-1778. 

200, 21. Genlis. Stephanie, Countess GenUs (i 746-1 830), a writer of 
books on educational topics. 

201, 17. appeals to Mothers. Especially through disquisitions on the 
moral education of children in his Emile. 

201, 17. Contrat-social. One of the most influential of Rousseau's 
books. Its advocacy of popular sovereignty in government had much to 
do with producing the French Revolution. Its doctrines are measurably 
impressed also upon the American Declaration of Independence and the 
American Constitution. 

201, 17. his celebrations of Nature. Rousseau advocated the return 
of society to the simplicity of nature in politics, education, etc. 

201, 32. those stealings of ribbons. When a young man, Rousseau was 
accused of stealing a bit of ribbon from the home of Mme. de Vercellis, 
who had recently died, and in whose household he had been an attendant. 
He succeeded in turning suspicions from himself to a serving-maid of the 
house, but in his Confessions (end of Bk. I) he acknowledges that he was 
the real culprit. 

202, 14. Madame de Stael ... St. Pierre. French novelists who wrote 
under the influence of Rousseau. Madame de Stael (1766-1817) is best 
known by her Corinne; St. Pierre (1737-1814) by his Paul and Virginia. 

202, 29. from post to pillar. Rousseau was obliged to leave Paris 
because of the disfavor with which his Emile was received. He spent much 
time in Switzerland and England and in wandering about France. He 
finally returned to Paris. 

202, 31. the world was not his friend. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, V, i, 72: 

The world is not thy friend nor the world's law. 

203, 17. Vauxhall. A pleasure garden which was formerly located on 
the right bank of the Thames in London. 

203, 30. he was born. Near the town of Ayr, Scotland, in 1759. 

204, 2. The Steward. Of the rented lands which the older Burns farmed. 

205, 6. Harz-rock. The Harz Mountains are in Northern Germany. 
20s, 20. old Marquis Mirabeau. Father of the celebrated orator of the 

French Revolution. Cf. 48. 18, and note. 

205, 26. lion shaking dew-drops from his mane. Cf. Troilus and 
Cressida, III, iii, 222-225: 

Cupid 
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
Be shook to air. 



NOTES 301 

205, 28. laughs at the shaking of the spear. Cf. Job xli. 29. 

206, 2. Professor Stewart. Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh University 
was a friend and critic of Burns. 

206, 13. Mr. Lockhart. Famous for his biography of Sir Walter Scott, 
his father-in-law. He also wrote a Life of Robert Burns which was the occa- 
sion of Carlyle's early essay on Burns. 

206, 31. Mirabeau. The French orator. Cf. 48. 18, 205. 20, and notes. 

207, 13. capture of smuggling schooners. In 1788, at a salary of ^^70, 
Burns was made an excise oflScer in Dumfries on Solway Frith. 

207, 16. might have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze. Mirabeau boldly 
dismissed from the French National Assembly Usher de Breze, who had 
been sent by the King, Louis XVI, to dissolve it. 

209, 25. Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere. To which 
Napoleon was appointed at the age of sixteen. 

209, 27. he is flying to the West Indies. In July, 1785, Burns pubUshed 
his first volume of poems to raise funds for a passage to the West Indies, 
where he intended to become a slave-driver. The success of the book was 
so great that his plans were changed. Instead of departing for the West 
Indies, he went to Edinburgh, and, for a season, was the social lion of that 
city's aristocratic and intellectual circles. 

209, 31. cynosure of all eyes. An adaptation of V Allegro, 79-80: 

Where perhaps some Beauty lies, 
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes. 

Cynosure (lit. the dog's tail) was the Greek name for the constellation of 
the Little Bear containing the pole-star, which guided the mariners on the 
seas at night. Hence the word has come to mean anything which strongly 
attracts attention; a centre of attraction. 

210, 5. rank is but the guinea-stamp. 

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gowd for a' that. 

Burns's For a' That and a' That. 

210, 26. Richter. Cf. 10. 15, and note. 



LECTURE VI. THE HERO AS KING 

211, 12. King . . . Can-ning. Cf. 13. 10, and note. 

211, 21. the finding of your Ableman. Cf. Introd., p. xliv. 

212, 2. Hustings-speeches. Cf. in. 8, and note. 

212, 3. Reform Bills. For enlarging the number of votes in elections 
for members of the House of Commons, and removing inequalities of repre- 
sentation from the different sections of England. The earliest of these 
bills was passed in 1832. 

212, 22. Schiller says. In his Aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, 
from a passage translated by Carlyle in his State of German Literature. 

213, 19. Sansculottism. Cf. 136. 25, and note. 

215, 12. for metallic coined money. Cf. 132. 21, and note. 



302 NOTES 

215, 24. Papa. Latin word meaning " father," originally given to any 
bishop of the church, but later applied especially to the Bishop of Rome. 
Hence, " pope." 

215, 26. Camille Desmoulins. A French journalist, whose harangue 
before the mob at the Palais-Royal in Paris on July 12, 1789, stirred them 
to take arms against the government. This was the beginning of the 
French Revolution. Desmoulins himself became a victim of the insurrec- 
tion which he had quickened. He was guillotined by the Revolutionists in 
1794, during the Reign of Terror. 

216, 12. Bedlam. A corrupted pronunciation of ''Bethlehem," — a reli- 
gious house, St. Mary of Bethlehem, in London, which was made into a 
hospital for the insane in 1547. 

216, 15. Three days of July 1830. A revolution of three days, July 
27-30, which dethroned Charles X of France, a weak but arbitrary king, 
who had attempted to reestablish in some measure the old absolutism of 
his ancestors. The deputies of the French assembly elected the popular 
Louis Philippe, the " Citizen King," to succeed Charles. 

216, 24. Niebuhr. 1776-1831. Unfortunately for Carlyle's state- 
ment, Niebuhr died, not of a broken heart, but of a cold caught while 
reading news of the war in a badly ventilated room. 

2i6, 27. Racine. The great French dramatist (1639-1699), contem- 
porary of Corneille and Moliere. 

218, 10. Liberty and Equality. The watchwords of the French Revolu- 
tionists. Cf. 13. 19-20, and note. 

218, 17. base plated coins. Cf. 13. 17. 

218, 28. Bending before men. A quotation from Novalis. Cf. 11. 26. 

218, 32. Novalis said. Cf. 11. 26. 

220, 6. wars ... of Roses. A civil strife for the possession of the 
English throne (1450-1485). The contestants were the houses of Lancaster 
and York, whose respective emblems were the red and the white rose. 

220, 7. Simon de Montfort. Earl of Leicester, 1208-1265, leader in 
the " Baron's War " against Henry III. He virtually established the 
House of Commons. 

220, 18. Laud. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645), 
was the arch-foe of Puritanism, and rigorously enforced conformity to 
the ceremonials and '' forms " of the established church. Upon the triumph 
of the Puritans, he was beheaded. 

220, 19. his King. Charles I, born 1600, beheaded by the Puritans, 1649. 

221, 6. Religion . . . clothes itself in forms. Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. 
Ill, ch. ii, " Church-clothes." 

222, 7. St. Catherine Creed's Church. In the district of Aldgate, 
London. Hume describes the ceremonials of this church's dedication by 
Laud in the History of Great Britain, Vol. VI, ch. lii. 

223, 3. Charles Second and his Rochesters. After the downfall of the 
Puritan government, the so-called Restoration brought to the throne 
Charles the Second, son of Charles the First. The court of the new 
monarch was very corrupt. Both politically and morally it was in direct 
contrast to the earlier Puritanism. Rochester, Earl of Wilmot, was a 
poet and favorite of the court. 



NOTES 303 

223, 23. Eliot, Hampden, Pym. Famous Puritan statesmen. Eliot 
and Pym, as advocates of the Petition of Rights, were early and success- 
ful leaders of the opposition to Charles. Eliot, however, was finally im- 
prisoned in the Tower, where he died, 1632. Pym and Hampden were 
among the '' five members " whose arrest was attempted by Charles in 
January, 1642. Hampden is chiefly remembered for his refusal to pay the 
obnoxious tax of " ship-money." His famous trial (1637-1638) brought 
the issues between King and subjects to a new head, and, though he lost 
the case, his stand definitely awakened a popular spirit of rebellion 
against tyranny. Hampden was slain in a battle fought against the King, 
1643. 

223, 23. Ludlow, Hutchinson. Regicides, and enemies of Cromwell. 

223, 24. Vane. Sir Harry Vane, a Puritan nobleman who opposed 
Charles I, but later attacked the Protectorate of Cromwell. In 1662 he 
was executed under Charles II 6n the charge of treason. 

223, 25. Conscript Fathers. The name given to the Senators of ancient 
Rome. 

224, I. Tartufe. The hero of Moliere's comedy of the same name. 
224, 9. As we said of the Valet. Cf. 198. 17-18, and note. 

224, 32. Ship-moneys. An obsolete tax imposed on seaports for the 
maintenance of the fleet. Charles sought to revive it and extend its appli- 
cation to inland towns. He was opposed by John Hampden. Cf. 223. 23, 
and note. 

224, 32. Monarchies of Man. A work by John Eliot entitled Monarchy 
of Man was written during his last imprisonment. Cf. 223. 23, and note. 

225, 12. Baresark. From berserk, meaning a fierce Norse warrior. 
According to an old etymology, the word signifies " bare shirt," hence a 
warrior who fights without armor. Carlyle adopts this interpretation. 
But the more probable explanation is " bear shirt," i.e. coat or shirt made of 
bearskin. Cf. Cent. Diet. 

225, 29. Calvinistic . . . creeds. Creeds derived from the teachings 
of Calvin, the great Swiss reformer, whose Institutes, published in 1536, 
formed the basis of Puritan and Presbyterian dogma. 

225, 30. Westminster Confessions. Cf. 156. 34, and note. 

228, I. Pococke asking Grotius. Cf. 47. 11-12, and notes. 

228, 16. Worcester Fight. This battle, Sept. 3, 165 1, was the final 
victory of Cromwell over the Royalists. The latter's army was disbanded. 

228, 19. Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick. Sir Philip, a 
Royalist, gathered this story among others about Cromwell which he pub- 
lished in his memoirs. The physician was a Dr. Simcott. Cromwell was 
born in Huntingdon, April 25, 1599, and spent much of his early life upon 
a Huntingdon farm. 

229, 4. St. Ives and Ely. Towns near Huntingdon. 
229, 16. great Taskmaster's eye. 

All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great Task-master's eye. 
— Milton's " Sonnet on being arrived at the Age of Twenty-three." 

229, 19. matter of the Bedford Feais. Reference to their drainage in 1637. 



304 



NOTES 



230, 3. Dunbar. Cromwell, fighting under heavy difficulties, defeated 
the Scotch Royalists at Dunbar, September 3, 1650. 

230, 5. Worcester Fight. Cf. 228. 16, and note. 

230, 7. Cavaliers. The adherents of the King. 

230, 7. lovelocks. The Cavaliers wore their hair in long curls, an 
affectation condemned by the Puritans, who cut theirs short and were 
known as Roundheads. 

230, 20. Presbyterian . . . Independents. The Presbyterians, hoping 
their order might be established as the national church, wished to com- 
promise with the King. On the other hand, the extreme branch of the 
Puritan party would yield him nothing. They were called Independents. 

230, 23. Hampton Court. After 1647, Charles was practically a prisoner 
at Hampton Court, a royal palace on the Thames some miles from London. 

231, 19. Ironsides. This name was given to Cromwell's regiment which 
fought under him at Marston Moor, July 2, 1644, but was afterwards 
applied to the entire army under his generalship. 

232, 5. Huntingdon Farmer. Cf. note on 228. 19. 

232, 22. pie-powder court. An ancient inferior court for the settle- 
ment of disputes at fairs and other places where pedlers assembled. The 
French for pedler was pied poudreux (lit. ' dusty feet ') ; hence, ' pie- 
powder.' 

233, 33. Falklands . . . Chillingworths . . . Clarendons. These men 
were Royalist contemporaries of Cromwell. Falkland and Clarendon were 
statesmen of accomplished tastes : the latter wrote A History of the Great 
Rebellion, i.e. the Puritan Revolution. Chillingworth was an eloquent 
preacher in the established church. 

235, 25. Pillar of Fire. Cf. Exod. xiii. 21. 

236, 31. wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at. Adapted 
from Othello, I, i, 64. 

237, 28. Fontenelle. A French writer of the early eighteenth century 
(1657-1757). 

240, 14. Whitehall. The royal palace in London during the time of 
Cromwell. 

240, 33. Corsica Boswell. The nickname was earned by Boswell through 
his somewhat fanatic espousal of the cause of Corsica in its fight for inde- 
pendence against the French. He wrote an account of the island; also 
appeared at a masquerade as a Corsican chief with the words '' Viva La 
Liberta ! " on his hat. 

241, 17. grand talent pour le silence. This characterization of the 
English is attributed to Napoleon. 

241, 21. Solomon says. Cf. Eccles. iii. 7. 

241, 32. as Cato said. Cato, the Roman Censor (234-149 B.C.), is re- 
ported to have said : 'that while many persons of little note had their statues . . . 
he had much rather it should be asked, why he had not a statue, than why 
he had one.' Langhorne, Plutarch^ s Lives, Vol. III. 

242, 6. Seekest thou great things. Cf . Jer. xlv. 5 . 

242, 27. poor Necker. Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance under 
Louis XVI. Unsuccessful in his efforts to meet the deficit in the national 
treasury, he nevertheless was liked by the masses, and his dismissal from 



NOTES 305 

oflSce was an immediate occasion for the riot of July 12, 1789, under the 
direction of Desmoulins. Cf. 215. 26, and note. 

242, 30. Gibbon. Edward Gibbon, celebrated historian (i 737-1 794), 
author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

243, 23. once more a Parliament. The Short Parliament, 1640, so- 
called because, after a session of only three weeks, it was dissolved by 
Charles on accoimt of its refusal to grant him revenue except on condition that 
he would redress the national complaints against him. 

244, 4. devout imagination. Cf. 164. 16. 

245, 2. Chancery Law-Courts. In Carlyle's time, the highest court in 
England; since 1873, a division of the so-called High Court of Justice. 

245, II. Hume's theory. In his History of England (1754-1761), Hume 
takes the view of Cromwell here noted by Carlyle. 

245, 19. Antaeus-like. Antaeus, the mythic giant, was invincible as 
long as he remained in contact with his Mother Earth. Hercules, in order 
to conquer him, lifted him into the air, and strangled him. 

245, 25. rugged Orson. Valentine and Orson were twin brothers born 
in a forest. The former was brought up at the court of King Pepin ; but 
the latter was carried off by a bear, and became so rough and wild that he 
was known as the " Terror of France." The story is a part of the Charle- 
magne cycle. 

246, II. Diocletian. 245-313. He rose from obscurity to the position 
of Emperor of Rome, but abdicated in 305, and retired to Salona in Dal- 
matia, where he spent the rest of his years in cultivating his gardens. The 
story of his preference for the ^' planting of cabbages " over the ruling of an 
empire is in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xiii. 

246, II. George Washington. Carlyle's 'faint praise' is typical of his 
disregard for Washington. Cf. his Journal, Vol. II, p. 300: ' Washington 
is another of our perfect characters; to me a most limited, uninteresting 
sort.' 

246, 23. diplomatic Argyles. The eighth Earl of Argyle (1598-1661) 
first sided with the Scotch Presbyterians; next with the Prince of Wales, 
after the execution of Charles; then with Cromwell. After the Restora- 
tion, he was executed for treason by Charles II. 

246, 27. Montrose. Marquis of Montrose, leader of the royal forces 
against the Scotch Covenanters; captured and executed, 1650. 

247, 12. Rump Parliament. The Long Parliament convened in 1640, and 
sat until 1648, when Captain Pride, leading two regiments into the house, 
''purged" it of those members favorable to a compromise with Charles. 
Only one-fourth of the original body was left. This remnant became known 
as the " Rump Parliament." Its fruitless discussions led Cromwell, on 
April 20, 1653, to dissolve it in the manner described by Carlyle. 

247, 13. assumption of the Protectorship. After the dismissal of the 
" Rump," Cromwell became dictator, presently assuming the title of Lord 
Protector (Dec. 16, 1653). 

247, 23. Long Parliament. Cf. note on 247. 12. 

248, 18. Pride's Purges. Cf. note on 247. 12. 

248, 24. diligent Godwin. WiUiam Godwin (1756-1836); author of A 
History of the Commonwealth ; father-in-law of the poet Shelley. 



3o6 NOTES 

249, 4. a kind of Reform Bill. The first real Reform Bill was not passed 
until 1832. Cf. 212. 3, and note. 

249, 23. Milton . . . could applaud. Milton was Latin Secretary of the 
Council of State under Cromwell. His chief is the theme of a laudatory 
sonnet written in 1652. 

249, 33' Barebone's Parliament. Cromwell's enemies sarcastically so 
named it from one of the members, "Praise God" Barebone, or Barbone, 
a Baptist preacher, leather-dealer and politician. 

249, 33. Convocation of the Notables. A French assembly of nobles 
and high churchmen. The last and most famous of these convocations 
was summoned by Louis XVI on the eve of the French Revolution. 

250, 13. reform the Court of Chancery. Cf. 245. 2, and note. 
250, 18. Commander-in-chief. Appointed June 26, 1650. 

250, 27. Instrument of Government. A constitution drawn up and 
adopted by the supporters of Cromwell, whereby his Protectorship was 
established, and a new system of legislation was provided. 

251, 7. Oliver's second Parliament. September, 1654-January, 1655. 
251, 13. third Parliament. September, i6s6-February, 1658. 

253, I. Lord Clarendon. Cf. 233. 33, and note. 

253, 31. Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul. Prime ministers, in the eighteenth 
century, of England, Portugal and France respectively. 

254, 5. Old Colonel Hutchinson. Cf. 223. 23, and note. 

254, 24. dead body was hung. Cromwell died of a fever, September 3, 
1658, and was buried among the English kings in Westminster Abbey. 
After the Restoration, his body was exhumed and hanged at Tyburn, the 
place where criminals were executed. 

254, 28. first ... to pronounce him. In this lecture, and more es- 
pecially in his later book on Cromwell, Carlyle substantially reversed the 
general estimate of his hero's character. Cf. Introd., p. xxii. 

255, 3. in 1688. The " Glorious Revolution " of this year drove the 
tyrannical James II from the throne, and, in establishing a new constitu- 
tional monarchy, confirmed the principles of the earlier revolution of the 
Puritans. Cf. 157. 20, and note. 

255, 15. Sansculottism. Cf. 136. 25, and note. 

256, 3. Encyclopedies. Cf. 16. 13, and note. 

256, 6. dumb Prophet. Cf. 233. 30. 

256,8. Hume's notion. Cf. 245. 11, and note. 

257, 3. savans. Scholars who went with Napoleon to Egypt on scien- 
tific investigations. 

257, 3. Bourrienne. 1 769-1834. Napoleon's secretary and biographer. 
257, 4. voyage to Egypt. 1798. 

257, 14. Tuileries. Parisian palace of the French kings; destroyed in 
1871. 

257, 21. Saint Helena. Island off the coast of Africa whither Napoleon 
was exiled after his final defeat at Waterloo, 181 5. He died there in 1821. 

258, 2. La carriere ouverte aux talents. Literally, the career is open to 
talents. A saying of Napoleon's. 

258, 10. On that Twentieth of June (1792). On this day the revolu- 
tionary mob stormed the Tuileries, then occupied by the royal family. 



NOTES 307 

258,13. On the Tenth of August. The mob again invaded the Tuileries. 
The king and queen took refuge in the National Assembly, but many of 
their Swiss bodyguard were massacred. 

258, 17. brilliant Italian Campaigns. 1 796-1 797. 

258, 18. Peace of Leoben. Between Napoleon and Austria, signed 
April 18, 1797. 

258, 30. Wagrams, Austerlitzes. At the battle of Austerlitz, Dec. 2, 
1805, Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians. His final victory 
over the Austrians was at Wagram, July 6, 1809. 

259, 3. Petit Caporal. His soldiers gave Napoleon the nickname of 
"Little Corporal" on account of his short stature. 

259, 4. Chief-consulship, Emperorship. Napoleon assumed the first 
office in 1799, and was made emperor in 1804. 

259, 5. poor Lieutenant of La Fere. Napoleon began his military career 
as lieutenant of this regiment (1785-1791), which received its name from a 
town in northern France. Cf. 209. 25, and note. 

259, II. Austrian Dynasties. In order to make a royal connection and 
found his " Dynasty," Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine, and in 1810 
married the Austrian emperor's daughter, Maria Louisa, who bore him a 
son, " The King of Rome," April 20, 181 1. 

259, II. Popedoms. Cf. 259. 24, and note. 

259, 15. given-up to strong delusion. Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 11: * And for this 
cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie.' 

259, 24. Pope's-Concordat. An agreement between Pope Pius VII and 
Napoleon in 1801, providing that the Church of Rome and the French 
Republic should give each other official recognition. 

259, 26. la vaccine de la religion. The vaccination of religion, — as a 
preventative of its development. Napoleon is reported to have said that, 
because of the Concordat, religion would disappear in fifty years. 

259,27. ceremonial Coronations. Napoleon was* crowned in the cathe- 
dral of Notre Dame, Paris, December 2, 1804. * The old Italian Chimera* 
who annointed him was the Pope; presumably so-called because his office 
retained only a shadow of its ancient authority. 

259, 28. wanting nothing. Bourrienne says that the remark was made 
to Napoleon himself the next day after the coronation. 

259, 29. Augereau. One of Napoleon's generals (i 757-1816). 

259, 31. Cromwell's Inauguration. Clarendon describes a more elabo- 
rate ceremony than Carlyle here indicates. Cf. History of the Great Re- 
hellion, Bk. XV. 

260, 20. The Duke of Weimar. Charles Augustus (1775-1828), the 
patron of Goethe. 

260, 28. Bookseller, Palm. Of Nuremberg; courtmartialed and shot 
by Napoleon^s orders, 1806, for publishing a pamphlet in criticism of the 
Emperor. 

261, 6. #bauche. A first sketch or * rude-draught. 

261, 15. Isle of Oleron. A small island in the Atlantic belonging to 
France. 
261, 33. and die. May 5, 182 1. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

This bibliography has been prepared as a suggestion of means whereby the 
student's knowledge of Carlyle may be extended, and the materials upon which 
Heroes and Hero-Worship is based may be clarified. The aim has been to confine 
the list to books generally accessible, but, at the same time, to make it sufficiently 
inclusive for choices to be made from it which may meet the various require- 
ments of individual readers or classes. Much of the value of Heroes and Hero- 
Worship is in the stimulus it may give to a further reading in the fields which 
it embraces. It is hoped that the subjoined list may serve as a guide to such 
investigation, as well as an aid to the immediate understanding of Carlyle 
himself. 

Carlyle. (a) Biography: J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, A History of the First 
Forty Years of his Life, and Thomas Carlyle, A History of his Life in London; 
R. Garnett, Life of Carlyle (Great Writers Series); D. Masson, Carlyle, 
Personally and in his Writings; J. Nichol, Thomas Carlyle (English Men of 
Letters Series) ; Letters of Thomas Carlyle, Correspondence between Goethe 
and Carlyle, Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
Carlyle's Reminiscences, — all ed. by C. E. Norton; Love Letters of Thomas 
Carlyle and Jane Welsh, ed. by A. Carlyle ; Letters and Memorials of Jane 
Welsh Carlyle, ed. by J. A. Froude. 

{h) Criticism : P. Bayne, Lessons from My Masters, Carlyle, Tennyson, 
and Ruskin; A. Birrell, in Obiter Dicta, First Series; Frederick Harrison, in 
Studies in Early Victorian Writers; R. H. Hutton, in Modern Guides of Eng- 
lish Thought in Matters of Faith; A. H. Japp, in Three Great Teachers of 
Our Own Time; J. R. Lowell, in My Study Windows; W. Minto, in A Manual 
of English Prose Literature; John Morley, in Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I; 
J. C. Shairp, "Prose Poets: Thomas Carlyle," in Aspects of Poetry; L. Ste- 
phen, " Carlyle's Ethics," in Hours in a Library, Vol. HI. 

Lect. I. R. B. Anderson, Norse Mythology; Matthew Arnold, Balder Dead; 
T. Bulfinch, The Age of Fable; C. M. Gayley, The Classic Myths in English 
Literature; J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (tr. from the German) ; H. A. 
Guerber, Myths of Northern Lands; K. F. Kauffman, Northern Mythology 
(The Temple Primers), tr. from the German; L. Laing, tr. of Heimskringla; 
P. H. Mallet, Northern Antiquities (Bohn's Library), tr. from the French, 
and containing, pp. 398-458, a tr. of the Younger Edda; H. Morley, English 
Writers, Vol. I, pp. 264-275, and Vol. II, pp. 335-365, including tr. of 
V'oluspa; Morris and Magnusson, tr. of Heimskringla, and Voluspa Saga; 
WiUiam Morris, The Story of Sigurd ; G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, 
ed. and tr. of Corpus Poeticum Boreale, The Poetry of the Old Northern 
Tongue. 

Lect. II. Syed Ameer AH, The Spirit of Islam; J. F. Clarke, "Mohammed 
and Islam," in Ten Great Religions; E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of 

308 



BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 309 

the Roman Empire, chap. 1 ; Washington Irving, Mahomet and his Successors; 
D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam; Sir W. Muir, Life of 
Mahomet; J. M. Rodwell, tr. of Koran (Everyman's Library) ; G. Sale, tr. 
of Koran, with notes and ''A PreHminary Discourse"; R. B. Smith, Mo- 
hammed and Mohammedanism ; A. Sprenger, Life of Mahomet. 

Lect. hi. R. W. Church, Dante, an Essay; C. A. Dinsmore, Aids to the Study 
of Dante; K. Federn, Dante and his Time ; J. R. Lowell, ''Dante," in Among 
My Books; Mrs. OHphant, "The Poet : — Dante," in The Makers of Florence; 
L. Ragg, Dante and his Italy; M. F. Rossetti, Shadow of Dante; G. A. 
Scartazzini, A Handbook to Dante, and A Companion to Dante (both tr. 
from the German) ; J. A. Symonds, A Study of Dante; Norton's and 
Rossetti's translations of La Vita Nuova; Gary's and Longfellow's verse 
translations, Norton's prose translation, of The Divine Comedy. 

Karl Elze, William Shakespeare: A Literary Biography (Bohn's Library), 
tr. from the German; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shake- 
speare; Sidney Lee, The Life of Shakespeare (the best biography) ; H. 
Mabie, William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man; W. Bagehot, 
"Shakespeare the Man," in Literary Studies, Vol. I; Goldwin Smith, 
Shakespeare the Man; R. W. Emerson, "Shakespeare; or, the Poet," in 
Representative Men; A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy; G. Brandes, 
William Shakespeare, a Critical Study (tr. from the Danish) ; F. S. Boas, 
Shakespeare and his Predecessors ; S. T. Coleridge, Seven Lectures on Shake- 
speare and Milton; E. Dowden, Introduction to Shakespeare, a.ndS hakes peare^ 
His Mind and Art; H. N. Hudson, Shakespeare: Life, Art, and Characters; 
J. R. Lowell, "Shakespeare Once More," in Among My Books; W. Raleigh, 
Shakespeare (English Men of Letters Series) ; B. Ten Brink, Five Lectures 
on Shakespeare (tr. from the German) ; H. Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art 
(tr. from the German) ; B. Wendell, William Shakespeare, a Study in Eliza- 
bethan Literature. 

Lect. IV. P. Bayne, Martin Luther, His Life and Work; J. A. Froude, "Times 
of Erasmus and Luther," in Short Studies on Great Subjects; J. Kostlin, 
Life of Luther (tr. from the German) ; J. Michelet, Life of Luther from His 
Own Writings (tr. from the French) ; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, 
"The Reformation"; J. H. Merle d'Aubigne, History of the Reformation 
of the Sixteenth Century (tr. from the French) ; T. A. Lindsay, A History 
of the Reformation; L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany 
(tr. from the German) ; F. Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Reformation 
(Epochs of History Series) ; Martin Luther, Table Talk (Bohn's Library), 
tr. and ed. by W. HazHtt. 

P. H. Brown, John Knox; A Biography; Thomas Carlyle, "The 
Portraits of John Knox," in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; Andrew 
Lang, John Knox and the Reformation; T. M. M'Crie, Life of John Knox; 
John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland; Works of John Knox, ed. 
by D. Laing. 

Lect. V. James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (of which the best ed. is G. B. 
Hill's); A. Birrell, "Doctor Johnson," in Obiter Dicta, Second Series; A.M. 
Broadley, Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale; Thomas Carlyle, "Boswell's 
Life of Johnson," in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; G. B. Hill, Dr. John- 



3IO BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

son. His Friends and His Critics; T. B. Macaulay, Samuel Johnson (written 
for Encyc. Brit.), and review of Crocker's Edition of BoswelVs Life of John- 
son; W. Raleigh, Six Essays on Johnson; L. Stephen, "Dr. Johnson's 
Writings," in Hours in a Library, Vol. II, and Samuel Johnson (English 
Men of Letters Series) ; Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. by G. B. 
Hill ; Six Chief Lives from Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. by Matthew 
Arnold; Selected Essays of Samuel Johnson, ed. by G. B. Hill; Selections 
from the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. by C. G. Osgood (EngUsh Readings 
Series) ; Rasselas. 

Saint-Marc Girardin, /.-/. Rousseau; John Morley, Rousseau; H. W. 
Hudson, Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought; C. H. Lincoln, 
Rousseau and the French Revolution; J. R. Lowell, "Rousseau and the 
Sentimentalists," in Among My Books; Mrs. Frederika Macdonald, Jean 
Jacques Rousseau, a New Criticism; Rousseau :^ ^ocia/ Contract, tr. and ed., 
with introduction and notes by H. F. Tozer; Emile (Everyman's Library), 
tr. by B. Foxley ; Confessions (numerous translations) ; La Nouvelle Helo'ise, 
and lesser works (few or no translations). 

Biographical and critical notices of Bums in editions of his works by 
Cunningham, Currie, Henley, Alexander Smith, etc.; J. S. Blackie, Life 
of Burns (Great Writers Series) ; J. G. Lockhart, Life of Robert Burns; J. C. 
Shairp, Robert Burns (English Men of Letters Series) ; Stopford Brooke, 
"Burns," in Theology in the English Poets; Thomas Carlyle, "Bums," in 
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; W. A. Craigie, A Primer of Burns; 
J. Forster, "Burns," in Great Teachers; W. Hazlitt, "On Bums and the Old 
English Ballads," in Lectures on the English Poets; J. C. Shairp, "Scottish 
Song and Bums," in Aspects of Poetry; R. L. Stevenson, "Some Aspects of 
Robert Burns," in Familiar Studies of Men and Books; Burns, Poetical 
Works (Cambridge Edition), ed. by W. E. Henley. 
Lect. VI. S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution 
(Epochs of History Series), History of the Great Civil War, and History of the 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate; J. R. Green, chapters on "Puritan Eng- 
land" in Short History of the English People; Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Crom- 
welVs Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations; C. Firth, Oliver Cromwell 
and the Rule of the Puritans in England (Heroes of the Nations Series) ; 
J. Forster, Oliver Cromwell; S. R. Gardiner, Oliver Cromwell; Frederick 
Harrison, Oliver Cromwell; John Morley, Oliver Cromwell; Goldwin Smith, 
Three English Statesmen (Pym, Cromwell, Pitt) ; J. A. Picton, Oliver Crom- 
well, the Man and His Mission; Theodore Roosevelt, Oliver Cromwell. 

Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution; Shailer Mathews, The French 
Revolution; a Sketch; W.O.Morris, The French Revolution and First Empire : 
An Historical Sketch (Epochs of History Series) ; H. Morse Stephens, The 
French Revolution; The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, "The French 
Revolution," and Vol. IX, "Napoleon"; Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon 
Bonaparte (tr. from the French); R. W. Emerson, "Napoleon; or, the 
Man of the World," in Representative Men; R. M. Johnston, Napoleon, a 
Short Biography; J. G. Lockhart, The History of Napoleon Bonaparte; 
J. H. Rose, The Life of Napoleon I, 



CARLYLE'S INDEX 



Agincourt, Shakspeare's battle of, ii8. 

Ali, young, Mahomet's kinsman and con- 
vert, 63. 

Allegory, the sportful shadow of earnest 
Faith, 6, 33. 

Ambition, foolish charge of, 239; laud- 
able ambition, 232. 

Arabia and the Arabs, 51. 

Balder, the white Sungod, 25, 37. 

Belief, the true god-announcing miracle, 
61, 82, i.«;6, 187 ; war of, 220. See Re- 
ligion, Scepticism. 

Benthamism, 81, 186. 

Books, miraculous influence of, 173, 177; 
our modern University, Church and 
Parliament, 173. 

Boswell, 198. 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 7. 

Burns, 203; his birth, and humble heroic 
parents, 203 ; rustic dialect, 204 ; the 
most gifted British soul of his century, 
205; resemblance to Mirabeau, 206; 
his sincerity, 208; his visit to Edin- 
burgh, Lion-hunted to death, 209, 210. 

Caabah, the, with its Black Stone and 
Sacred Well, 53. 

Canopus, Worship of, 10. 

Charles I., fatally incapable of being dealt 
with, 230. 

China, literary governors of, 182. 

Church. See Books. 

Cromwell, 223; his hypochondria, 228, 
234 ; early marriage and conversion, 228 ; 
a quiet farmer, 229; his Ironsides, 
231; his Speeches, 236, 251; his 'am- 
bition,' and the like, 239; dismisses 
the Rump Parliament, 248, 249; Pro- 
tectorship and Parliamentary Futili- 
ties, 250; his last days and closing 
sorrows, 254. 

Dante, 92; biography in his Book and 
Portrait, 92; his birth, education, and 
early career, 93, 94; love for Bea- 
trice, unhappy marriage, banishment, 
94, 95; uncourtier-like ways, 95; death, 



97; his Divina Commedia genuinely 
a song, 98; the Unseen World, as 
figured in the Christianity of the Mid- 
dle Ages, 104; 'uses' of Dante, 107. 

David, the Hebrew King, 50. 

Divine Right of Kings, 213. 

Duty, 33, 68; infinite nature of, 81; 
sceptical spiritual paralysis, 184. 

Edda, the Scandinavian, 18. 

Eighteenth Century, the sceptical, 184- 

191, 224. 
Elizabethan Era, no. 

Faults, his, not the criterion of any man, 

SO. 
Fichte's theory of literary men, 168. 
Fire, miraculous nature of, 19. 
Forms, necessity for, 221. 
Frost. See Fire. 

Goethe's 'characters,' 113; notablest of 

literary men, 169. 
Graphic, secret of being, loi. 
Gray's misconception of Norse lore, 37. 

Hampden, 227. 

Heroes, Universal History the united 
biographies of, i, 32; how 'little critics' 
account for great men, 13; all Heroes 
fundamentally of the same stuff, 30, 
46, 84, 124, 166, 207; Heroism possible 
to all, 137, 156; Intellect the primary 
outfit, 113; no man a hero to a valet- 
soul, 198, 224, 233. 

Hero-worship the tap-root of all Reli- 
gion, 12-17, 45; perennial in man, 16, 
91, 136, 218. 

Hutchinson and Cromwell, 223, 254. . 

Iceland, the home of Norse Poets, 18. 

Idolatry, 130; criminal only when in- 
sincere, 131. 

Igdrasil, the Life-Tree, 22, no, 184. 

Intellect, the summary of man's gifts, 
114, 183. 

Islam, 60. 



311 



312 



INDEX 



Job, the Book of, 52. 

Johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypochon- 
dria, 192; rude self-help; stands genu- 
inely by the old formulas, 194; his noble 
unconscious sincerity, 196; twofold 
Gospel, of Prudence and hatred of 
Cant, 197 ; his Dictionary, 197 ; the 
brave old Samuel, 199, 242. 

Jotuns, 19, 38. 

Kadijah, the good, Mahomet's first Wife, 
57, 62. 

King, the, a summary of all the various 
figures of Heroism, 211; indispens- 
able in all movements of men, 246. 

Knox's influence on Scotland, 156; the 
bravest of Scotchmen, 158; his unas- 
suming career; is sent to the French 
Galleys, 159; his colloquies with Queen 
Mary, 160; vein of drollery; a brother 
to high and to low; his death, 163. 

Koran, the, 69. 

Lamaism, Grand, 5. 

Leo X., the elegant Pagan Pope, 142. 

Liberty and Equality, 137, 218. 

Literary Men, 166; in China, 182. 

Literature, chaotic condition of, 171; not 
our heaviest evil, 183. 

Luther's birth and parentage, 137; hard- 
ship and rigorous necessity; death of 
Alexis; becomes monk, 139; his reli- 
gious despair; finds a Bible; deliver- 
ance from darkness, 140; Rome; Tet- 
zel, 141; burns the Pope's Bull, 144; 
at the Diet of Worms, 145 ; King of 
the Reformation, 149; 'Duke-Georges 
nine days running,' 151; his little 
daughter's deathbed; his solitary Pat- 
mos, 152; his Portrait, 153. 

Mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, 
55; marries Kadijah, 57; quiet, unam- 
bitious life, 57; divine commission, 60; 
the good Kadijah believes him; Seid; 
young Ali, 62 ; offences, and sore strug- 
gles, 63 ; flight from Mecca ; being 
driven to take the sword, he uses it, 
65 ; the Koran, 69 ; ■ a veritable Hero, 
77; Seid's death, 77; freedom from 
Cant, 78 ; the infinite nature of Duty, 81. 

Mary, Queen, and Knox, 160. 

Mayflower, sailing of the, 154. 

Mecca, 54. 

Middle Ages, represented by Dante and 
Shakspeare, 105, 106, 109. 

Montrose, the Hero-Cavalier, 246. 

Musical, all deep things, 90. 



Napoleon, a portentous mixture of Quack 
and Hero, 256; his instinct for the 
practical, 257; his democratic faith 
and heart-hatred for anarchy, 258; 
apostatised from his old faith in Facts, 
and took to believing in Semblances, 
259; this Napoleonism was unjust, 
and could not last, 260. 

Nature all one great Miracle, 9, 73, 152; 
a righteous Umpire, 66. 

Novalis, on Man, 11; Belief, 62; Shak- 
speare, 116. 

Odin, the first Norse 'man of genius,' 23; 
historic rumours and guesses, 25; how 
he came to be deified, 27; invented 
'runes,' 29; Hero, Prophet, God, 30. 

Olaf, King, and Thor, 43. 

Original, the, man, the sincere man, 49, 
135- 

Paganism, Scandinavian, 4; not mere 
Allegory, 6; Nature-worship, 8, 32; 
Hero-worship, 11; creed of our fathers, 
17, 39, 42; Impersonation of the visi- 
ble workings of Nature, 18; contrasted 
with Greek Paganism, 21; the first 
Norse Thinker, 23 ; main practical Be- 
lief; indispensable to be brave, 34; 
hearty, homely, rugged Mythology; 
Balder, Thor, 37; Consecration of 
Valour, 44. 

Parliaments superseded by Books, 177; 
Cromwell's Parliaments, 247. 

Past, the whole, the possession of the 
Present, 44. 

Poet, the, and Prophet, 86, 108, 119. 

Poetry and Prose, distinction of, 89, 97. 

Popery, 146. 

Poverty, advantages of, 180. 

Priest, the true, a kind of Prophet, 124. 

Printing, consequences of, 177. 

Private judgment, 133. 

Progress of the Species, 127, 

Prose. See Poetry. 

Protestantism, the root of Modern Euro- 
pean History, 133; not dead yet, 148; 
its living fruit, 200, 215. 

Purgatory, noble Catholic conception of, 
103. 

Puritanism, founded by Knox, 154; true 
beginning of America, 155; the one 
epoch of Scotland, 156; Theocracy, 
163; Puritanism in England, 220, 222, 
243. 

Quackery originates nothing, 5, 47; age 
of, 189; Quacks and Dupes, 233. 



INDEX 



313 



Ragnarok, 42. 

Reformer, the true, 125. 

Religion, a man's, the chief fact with 
regard to him, 2 ; based on Hero-wor- 
ship, 12; propagating by the sword, 
6s; cannot succeed by being 'easy,' 76. 

Revolution, 213; the French, 215, 255. 

Richter, 10. 

Right and Wrong, 81, 105 

Rousseau, not a strong man; his Por- 
trait; egoism, 199; his passionate ap- 
peals, 201 ; his Books, like himself, 
unhealthy; the Evangelist of the 
French Revolution, 202. 

Scepticism, a spiritual paralysis, 1 83-191, 
224. 

Scotland awakened into life by Knox, 
156. 

Secret, the open, 86. 

Seid, Mahomet's slave and friend, 62, 77. 

Shakspeare and the Elizabethan Era, 
no; his all-sufficing intellect, in, 114; 
his Characters, 112; his Dramas, a 
part of Nature herself, 116; his joy- 
ful tranquillity, and overflowing love 
of laughter, 117; his hearty patriot- 
ism, 119; glimpses of the world that 
was in him, 119; a Heaven-sent Light- 
bringer, 120; a King of Saxondom, 
123. 



Shekinah, Man the true, 11. 

Silence, the great empire of, 109, 241. 

Sincerity, better than gracefulness, 33; 
the first characteristic of heroism and 
originality, 48, 58, 135, 137, 167. 

Theocracy, a, striven for by all true Re- 
formers, 164, 244. 

Thor, and his adventures, 20, 28, 39-42; 
his last appearance, 43. 

Thought, miraculous influence of, 23, 31, 
178; musical Thought, 89. 

Thunder. See Thor. 

Time, the great mystery of, 9. 

Tolerance, true and false, 149, 161. 

Turenne, 85. 

Universities, 173. 

Valour, the basis of all virtue, 34, 38; 

Norse consecration of, 44; Christian 

Valour, 128. 
Voltaire-worship, 15. 

Wish, the Norse god, 20; enlarged into 

a heaven by Mahomet, 82. 
Worms, Luther at, 145. 
Worship, transcendent wonder, 10. See 

Hero-worship. 

Zemzem, the sacred Well, 53. 



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